I embarked on the journey of becoming a sports fan in a state of near-complete cultural ignorance. Well, I say "embarked"; really, it was more like waking up in a pitch-black moving vehicle with a pounding headache and no idea where I was being taken. When had I started spending every second of my free time watching crappy streams of a game I didn't fully understand? Where had I gotten this sudden urge to scream at referees who couldn't hear me? Why did I suddenly care what a 'Fenwick' was?
I had no context for this. None. I'd never watched a sporting event of any kind all the way through. My firsthand experience with live sports consisted of one college basketball game when I was ten (I'd spent the whole time with my nose in a notebook inventing a curriculum for my spy school) and a Kansas City Royals game with my girlfriend's family when I was fifteen (I'd spent the whole time making out with said girlfriend, to general disapproval). Having grown up in the '90s, I was familiar with the name Michael Jordan, but I didn't know what sport he played. For twenty-one years, I completely tuned out everything that registered to my brain as sports-related.
I've met a lot of people over the last few years who came to love hockey as adults, like me. Most of them cite a friend as the impetus for their interest, someone who introduced them to the game and got them excited and answered all their questions. I did have hockey-knowledgeable friends to answer my questions, but nobody sat me down and explained how this all worked. I learned the rules of hockey by listening to the announcers and googling the terms I wasn't familiar with, and then reading Wikipedia articles I could barely comprehend.
It wasn't just the rules, though. I didn't only have to learn this sport; I had to learn sports. I didn't understand what a minor-league affiliate was, or the differences between an owner and a general manager and a coach, or what a salary cap meant. When I found out what it cost to buy a jersey, I was stunned. I got yelled at the first time I went to a WHL game, because no one told me to wait for a break in play to go to my seat.
And no one told me how much I would care.
I knew in the abstract that there were people who cared about sports, but it always seemed kind of performative to me, like they cared about it for the sake of having something to get worked up about. Sports in general always seemed like they existed for the sake of something to talk about, as a point of common interest with which to connect to other people. And yes, that's one purpose they serve; one that by definition is more visible to non-fans than the bone-deep, overwhelming caring I never understood until I felt it.
No one told me how much it would suck. I'd heard sports fans complain about losing streaks, but I'd always assumed it was like when terrible things happened on TV shows I loved--they might hurt to watch, but they were still well-executed, enjoyable in a perversely satisfying way. But no. That is not what it's like. There is no perverse satisfaction when my hockey team loses. There is no enjoyment.
And no one told me I wouldn't be able to dial it down. I never anticipated sitting between two people I love at a show I'd been looking forward to for months, dressed up as a glowing cloud, sullenly stewing over the outcome of a hockey game. You can't shut this off. When you're in this deep, you can't get out.
I've developed new interests plenty of times in my life, but this is the only time I've ever shifted the gears of my reality in a way that helped me grasp a whole slice of the culture I live in that I had never really understood or respected. Becoming a sports fan as an adult has allowed me to be aware of myself and to examine my engagement with the game--not objectively, I am sufficiently self-aware to acknowledge that, but perhaps more mindfully than if I'd grown up with it. And so I'm glad it happened this way. Even if I was woefully unprepared.
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