Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Sports in America V. Sports in Pakistan

If you haven’t already figured it out I am a geek. I have zero eye hand coordination and poor respiration. A perfect recipe for getting your ass kicked in sports. My classmates were well aware of my suckery and always picked me last in gym class. That’s why I find sports to be a terrible waste of human intellect.

But if I ever managed to take over the world all athletes would not be banished to underground cities to live out their lives in squalid conditions. As entertaining as that would be I would allow them to remain on the surface and permit them to live amongst us intellectuals because the sports they practice can be entertaining at times.

I enjoy watching the super bowl especially the half time show. But try talking about the super bowl in Pakistan and all you’ll get are blank stares and a crescendo of cricket chirps. This is partly due to the fact that no one but Americans gets football. And when you try talking to the rest of the world about football they get confused because they think you’re really talking about soccer. And then when you try explaining to them that you’re not talking about football but about American football, which is like rugby, expect with more padding. They get confused even more and ask you if you’re really talking about football. No I say I am talking about soccer. Sock who? Soccer. But why would I want to sock her? Because its fun. Its fun to sock her? Yes. That doesn’t seem very nice.

And don’t get me started on national pastimes. Two nations that I am intimately familiar with (America and Pakistan) both have a national pastime involving a bat and a ball. One nation uses a skinny bat while the other one uses a fat bat. Both of them get a kick out of smacking that ball around from dawn until dusk. Why that is so is any one’s guess.

But don’t get me wrong I too, even with all my reasoning and intellectual prowess do enjoy smacking things around. I liked playing hockey in gym class. My favorite position was defense. I guess my cave man instincts kick in when I am made part of a group and told to defend its honor. K’plah! It’s a good day to die I will fight with honor. That wretched puck will taste the cold blade of my bat'leth, er stick.

Speaking of hockey sticks I got to see the uniquely shaped sticks used in Pakistan during one of my numerous visits. Over here they play on the ground with a ball rather than on ice with a puck. The sticks have been adapted for this purpose so that they are shorter and have a sharp curve at the bottom, kinda like an upside down candy cane. Bye now!

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