Put it down to the outsized influence of The Catcher in the Rye, I suppose. (God knows every 10th grader who reads it thinks he’s experiencing the sort of life-changing epiphany that nobody else has ever had, exactly like every other 10th grader who reads it.) The effect is far greater for a kid at a gifted magnet school who is convinced that he can somehow figure out how to crack the code of adolescent sociology and bring down the entire colossal social structure of the high school world. (I had never seen nor heard of either of them, but if there was a Venn diagram showing the overlap between V for Vendetta and Square Pegs, I was right in the middle of it. Go ahead, laugh it out, I’ll wait here.)
Ready? Right, carry on:
At some point in my life – I don’t know when, I can’t offer an explanation, and I know it sounds crazy – I became consumed with the notion of my own authenticity. I didn’t want to try to be anything I was not, and more importantly, I didn’t want anyone to think I was trying to be something I’m not. I guess this first manifested itself in the gradual shedding of all my professional sports fandoms, except for the Redskins (which I cannot shake, it’s like some form of Football Herpes, not to be confused with Terrell Owens) and Celtic (which offers me pretty much the opposite of the Redskins – almost one guaranteed trophy a year, always a winning record, a good solid beatdown to the arch-rivals and the Scottish soccer equivalent of the Big Dance almost every year). Baseball, basketball, hockey? Right out. I barely notice anymore. Oh, I’ve tried, most recently with the NBA, but it’s just not going to happen at this point.
College sports…bit trickier.
SCHOOL 1 is the popular team where I grew up; their fandom is expressly not linked to actually attending said school. I did grow up with them, and rooted hard, but never actually went there. Problem is, their fans are getting embarrassing, and they’re just not that much fun to follow anymore.
SCHOOL 2 is my undergrad alma mater, of which I am so embarassed I refuse to name them or acknowledge I was ever associated with them. Despite having been an alumni booster before I was even a legit alum, I have crossed them off. They are on The List.
SCHOOL 3 was where I went to grad school. I was supposed to be in the doctoral program, but left with a master’s after 3 years (and not entirely of my own choosing). I would be happy to claim them, despite less-than-stellar performances by the football team, but it feels vaguely illegitimate. I would feel I was on thin ice to claim myself an alum in the presence of others who actually went there for their four-year bachelors.
SCHOOL 4 is where the wife went to school. And by “went to school,” I mean marched in the band, was immersed in the culture, and made friends who are still in her closest circle after all these years. This is where we have season tickets for football, this is what eats up must autumn afternoons, this is a place where I know all the words and all the cheers and could pass in a heartbeat among anyone who didn’t look closely at my class ring. But the key word there is “pass.”
I know this is very strange and odd, but I have come to a point in my life where I really don’t want to present myself as something I’m not. But since higher education was the goal and focus of most of my first 25 or so years of life, it leaves a hole in my reality not to have *something* I can call my own, a name for the sweatshirt when I go to the Farmer’s Market on autumn Sundays, a team to look for on the ESPN crawl.
I think I have some issues.