I’m supposed to love watching my kids play sports. I tolerated it. At best. I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
Ditto on people. As they ruin everything, but they are everywhere, I must tolerate them.
Sports and competition: I love when people hate on things that are part of the human condition. Watching theatre/shows, sports, etc: These are inherent components of who we are (as a group) and how we got here. And the snobbery has to stop. People deride how sports are ‘‘made up’’ and hate how people get sooo into them, but turn around and salivate over the word Jedi, and spend money on paraphernalia from movies (as just an example). I tolerate people who are into fiction, fictional movies, etc. And while on the surface my friends think I root for the Piggers, I really don’t care, but I tolerate talk and I tolerate their excitement.
We’re humans. We do things. As groups. And we battled our way here. Yay art. Yay sports.
Let’s all tolerate some things. We ain’t gotta love them.
That’s fair. I probably should’ve said I tolerate people who speak smugly about books (not directed at you or anyone in this thread by any stretch of the imagination) or anything else while trying not to let them hear the grinding of my teeth. I think I just hate smug people. Which probably holds true for most others as well. Except the smug people.
Cheese. For some reason cheese is the default topping on everything. I would starve before I would eat it (yes, I have come pretty close to doing just that more than once).
Social media (except for this place, of course).
Hamilton. I don’t care how clever the lyrics are, the sound / cadence of hip hop makes me homicidal.
Oh wait, I’m supposed to list things I can tolerate.
Um. . . . Peeps. Not good but for some reason I feel obligated to eat at least one around Easter.
I am also fascinated by people who say people don’t constantly talk about movies. How have they avoided the almost constant talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (of which I don’t care for that much). Just about everyone is asking or talking about the Avengers: Infinity War movie. And around Star Wars movie time (of which I am a fan), people constantly were talking about that.
It’s just as bad for popular TV shows. Every Monday after a Game of Thrones Sunday that’s all people want to talk about.
Sports are generally a communal activity which has the added feature of tapping into our tribal identities. In some respects that can get people to have a bit more pride in the cities in which they reside. I will also point out that sports, at some level, tends to transcend differences in politics more than anything else I’ve ever seen - I can discuss how a team is doing with a conservative or a liberal (until we get to kneeling during the anthem, I guess).
For what I am supposed to love but don’t: classical music. I find it utterly dull, but am constantly asked by my young urban professional friend group to attend the Symphony.
Throwing in a sidenote: I got into playing with track cars last summer. I’ve been a “real” athlete all my life and regarded racing as a non-sport and rather unskilled redneck pursuit.
Nope, it’s a “holy shit, this is complicated” sport. Now, I’m a track amateur and it may be different for experienced drivers, but I get such a strong adrenaline rush my muscles ache as they did after a high stakes basketball game or 400 meter relay contest. Track driving demands 100% of my concentration as nothing else does, which is good for my naturally slothful and distractable grey matter.
I’m a literature professor and there are a lot of classics that are truly awful. I’m teaching early AmLit this summer as a favor for a friend; it’s my least favorite lit era and I’ll be gritting my teeth the whole semester.
Not sure what that actually means. Because I loathe sports, I’m not supposed to go the gym? A gym is very much NOT a sports club. If it were a sports club I wouldn’t feel welcome of be there. Doing squats doesn’t automatically equate that I care about the next years line up.
Another data point that books movies and tv shows aren’t a good comparison for sports interest: My local news does NOT dedicate a significant amount of their time to “books, movies and tv shows”.
I would gladly prefer the Sports department and sports segment replaced with a Science department and a Science segment.
If you’ve got an ordinary grill (gas or charcoal), you’re good to go; I do something like this all the time, even when I’m not making classic American-style BBQ. Wood chips can be found in most grocery stores, near where other grilling supplies are stocked, and you can get whatever kind suits you: hickory, mesquite, applewood, cherrywood, and others. Just keep a water squirt bottle on hand in case the packet starts putting out a flame instead of smoke.
As I pointed out, seeing as how sports is a communal tribal activity that, for its followers tends to produce civic pride, it makes a lot of sense for it to be on local news. You’ll note national news generally doesn’t care to discuss sports - because it generally doesn’t have those communal tribal local pride aspects aside from things like the Olympics (which at times national news indeed may cover).
And on that note, you might as well not serve me your $$$ a bottle Chateauneuf du whatever. It’s not that I don’t like it. I just can’t tell the difference between that and Two-Buck Chuck. (I guess make that Three-Buck Chuck. Inflation.) No palate, apparently. I don’t even think you were supposed to open that bottle, I think you were supposed to pass it down to your eldest son.
Gaming. As in video gaming. Never got the bug, my hand/eye coordination just doesn’t work that way. I am not tech-y. I’d rather play scrabble or do a crossword.
Wine. In my case I got sick on it once, at an early age, and that ruined it for me forever. I can and have drank it many times over the years but the first sip is always an instant flashback to that miserable experience. The only wines I have enjoyed were home made super sweet (and high alcohol) “dessert” wines but one glass was plenty.
Oddly, in my misspent youth, I got sick on beer numerous times and that didn’t limit my future consumption at all.
Dave Barry said, “If you were managing a fantasy herd of elk, they’d place you in a straitjacket and squirt lithium down your throat with a turkey baster.”
