Life – Page 18

Daddy’s Little Girl

May 15, 2011 by koalateagirl

I am my father’s daughter and I’m damn proud of it. My dad never shied away from teaching me about sports because of my gender, in fact it became something the two of us had in common when I was a teenager and most of my friends had no real relationship with their dads. Dad and I love sports and we both love arguing about sports. We’ll root for opposing teams in a random game just to have something to bicker about. Dad says he decided that I was going to be a football fan when he and mum knew I was going to be an only child. They only had one television – so it was going to end up being 2 against 1 one way or the other and he decided it was going to be in his favour. There is a rumor that my first sentence was uttered in disgust at a certain CFL referee and was “you stupid ref”. I don’t believe it – maybe my second or third sentence but not my first. Dad and I would go to Argos games at Exhibition Stadium and later at Skydome and he would point out things I had never seen on television coverage. As I got older, I started pointing things out to him – the roles had reversed and I was now teaching him some of the finer points of football. It wasn’t just football either – Dad and I went to baseball and hockey games, and of course there was the annual trip to the Molson Indy in Toronto. Dad’s company had a Suite and I was there all day on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (but until I was older not on the Sunday – race day – since that was for the adults only)I watched the race from home while Mum and Dad sat in the suite. I wandered around the paddock on the weekdays and met some of the drivers – my great accomplishment was a t-shirt on which a then-unknown rookie named Alex Zanardi signed not only his name but a phone number. Since he had signed my back, I didn’t know about the phone number and dad hit the roof. I watched the mechanics work on the cars and convinced more than one of them to let me help. I learned that the driver can be as talented as he wants but if he doesn’t have a top-notch pit crew, he won’t be going anywhere. I still love open-wheel racing to this day – both the Indycar series and Formula One. One of my favourite things to do on a Sunday morning is get up at 7:45 with Dad and spend my morning watching Formula One racing with him. I also like attending live races with him. I love the noise of a live race (though I have always worn noise cancelling earphones to prevent hearing loss) and the smell of the oil and the hot rubber combining. I watch every race – not just the main events. I hold my breath and cross my fingers every time there is an accident. I am finding it harder to watch now that I know one of the drivers in the Indycar series – James Hinchcliffe. James is driving for Newmann-Haas racing and is the son of Dad’s former boss Jeremy. It’s very different when you know the family of the driver – it makes them more than a racing car driver – it makes them human. Yet I still watch, and even though I don’t live at home with Mum and Dad anymore, I message Dad the same comments during the race that we used to say when we were watching it together.

So yes, you could say I’m Daddy’s Little Girl – I will take that as a compliment of the highest order.

on women and football

May 14, 2011 by koalateagirl

Okay this has been a few days in the writing. Earlier this week I had the unfortunate experience of being talked down to by a misogynist asshole. He told me that “football is too complex a sport for the female mind to understand”. Yes that’s a direct quote, and no I didn’t kick him in the family jewels. (I was tempted, though) It did make me think though – football is a very male-dominated sport. It’s an old boys club and I’m not sure that it’s changing any time soon. I was raised to believe that women can do anything but I’m not sure that it’s true anymore. It’s the vicious loop of experience – it’s impossible to get a job doing what I love – and what I love is football – because I don’t have the experience and my gender is preventing me from getting the experience I apparently need. A lot of football jobs seem to go to former players, and while I enjoy hearing their take on a play, shouldn’t there be a forum for students of the game to show off what they know? I’m sick of the insinuation that the only reason women watch football is to watch the guys in the tight-fitting pants run around the field. While I will admit that this is definitely a bonus, I watch football because to me it is an intellectual exercise. I like trying to figure out what the offense is doing on a play and how the defense will react. I like challenging myself to figure out what alternatives to a play would be. I love the strategy of the game. I found out recently that I really like the behind the scenes stuff too – I got to attend the CFL’s Evaluation Camp (or E-camp as it is known) and I loved watching the college players work so hard towards their goal. You could see so much out of the players – you could tell which ones were willing to work hard for their goal – they were the ones who were still going full-out, play after play never giving less than their best. They were the ones who had the work ethic to make it in professional football or in any other endeavor for that matter. How am I any less qualified to judge that because of my gender? Why is my gender even a factor in 2011? it shouldn’t be but sadly, it is. Women now make up a significant percentage of the viewing audience for football – and not always with their husbands either. I know quite a few couples where only one person is interested in football – the woman. Given the popularity of the sport among women, why are there so few women within the football industry as a whole? Why are there no women amongst the talking heads on TSN or on most all sports radio stations? Are the men afraid we’ll show them up at their own game?

on the loss of a friend

May 14, 2011 by koalateagirl

I lost a friend tonight. Not just a friend but an ally. She took her own life because she couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now here’s where I do the unconventional thing – I’m going to rant and rail at my friend. How dare she be so selfish? Didn’t she realize that her suicide would hurt her friends? Her family? What about all the lives she could have touched had she chosen not to take her life? The world is far poorer without her. I am far poorer without her. I remember reading once that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I only wish my friend had remembered this earlier today.

Hello world!

May 14, 2011 by koalateagirl

I never thought I’d blog.. but sometimes I need to get my thoughts down in some sort of organized manner. This seemed worth a try. so welcome to my mind.