A Petty Bit Of Venom

I'm a die hard Cowboy fan. They were the first team I saw when I moved back to this country. I'm also a rabid sports fan...my favorite sport being football. I was absolutely thrilled to find out that the 'Boys were actually gonna be playing in Florida this year. On opening day in Jacksonville. Awesome. My roommate and I decided immediately that we HAD to get tickets and make the drive to see the game. The drive was over 4 hours, so we figured we'd get a hotel room.

As we made our plans, my next door neighbor chimed in that he'd like to go to the game and bring his girlfriend. Not such a big deal...he doesn't really follow sports, barely follows pro-football, and the only football he even half way knows (and I used that term lightly) it would be collegiate because he's a Gators fan.

To better understand my irritation I should probably elaborate. This is an example of how clueless he is about pro ball.

Him: What's that yellow line on the field out there?
Me: What yellow line?
Him: That one that goes across the field.
Me: (walks to the screen and points at the first down marker) You mean this?
Him: Yeah.
Me: That's the first down marker so that you know how far your team has left to go.
Him: Wow! Those guys paint it there awfully fast! How do they wash it away so quickly?

So I spent time explaining to him that it only appears on TV so that the fans at home can follow and that there isn't an actual yellow line that goes across the field.

Anyway, so we agree to go with him and his girlfriend. And the other neighbor guy gets in on the action despite being a Rams fan. We discuss getting 2 hotel rooms or 1 suite with 2 big beds and a sleeper sofa and booking the room for two nights. We decide to go with 2 nights so that we're not rushed. The initial idea was that we'd get to Jax early, hence the hotel, giving us time to relax and goof off. And we'd stay the night after the game so that we wouldn't have a long drive immediately following.

And this was planned MONTHS ago. So, of course, since it's not as important to THEM, this is what happens. Both guys wind up working. Neither bother to get the time off. The Rams fan has his own business and could've planned around it. The other guy...he says he's got a couple of jobs to do. So instead of leaving at 2 or 3 like roomie and I wanted, we wind up leaving after 6...which meant we got here after 11. Without having had supper. And I was fuming. It was inconsiderate of them. Had we known they were gonna pull this crap, we could've left on our own and met them here. Even more irritating is that the neighbor guy and his girlfriend haven't paid for their tickets or share of the hotel yet. And I know if this had been important to them, nothing would've kept them away. Worse, we HAD to wait for them because if we hadn't...they just wouldn't have bothered coming...and we would've been out the few hundred dollars, etc.

So I was already irritated about that, right? What else could piss me off? The fact that this guy decides to "be" a Jags fan today. Of all days. Not because he knows anything. Simply because he used to live in the area as a child. And then he was sitting there trying to act and talk like he knew what he was speaking about. It took quite a bit to hold myself back from making a fool of him and proving just how little he knows of football. And he was getting arrogant like he had a right because a team he suddenly claimed was winning. There we die hards were in the rain, cheering our team, and he was rubbing our noses in the fact that our team was losing to "his team"... As if!

I'll say this much...Going forward, he can decide to go to his own damned games. Because he really is clueless...and his disrespect was grating. And no, I'm not reacting that way because we lost. We deserved to lose with the shitty way we played. I'm saying this because I didn't appreciate his arrogant attitude and his flaunting a game his team was winning although he couldn't, not in a million years, explain how. I could've accentuated to the world what an ass he was, but I didn't. I behaved.

But I'm not inviting him to a football game again.