There and Back Again
I know I promised you something thoughtful and deep about the differences between the fencing mindset and the football one, but I'm too tired for meaningful. This time yesterday I was 900 miles away in Montreal having just woke up from five hours sleep. Today I am at my desk on five hours sleep, deep and thoughtful will just have to wait until I have had deep sleep of no less than nine hours in duration, and a meal that didn't come in a paper bag.
In the United States convenience store clerk is a job handled by those working their way through college, retired, or hope to get back to school one day. Fast food worker is a job held by high school kids, the retired, and others I can't quite describe at this level of rest. In Quebec, fast food and convenience store worker are jobs that aspiring models and actors work at in hopes of being discovered. Even the one working the fry vat has bright intelligent eyes, clear skin and a body that could not have ever eaten fast food. It was weird.
I remember walking into a convenience store in the middle of nowhere Quebec, my six years of failed french lessons a jumbled mess of misfiring synapses and emotional damage. This completely beautiful girl at the counter smiles at me saying "Bonjour, hello!" I manage to mumble a bonjure back while trying not to look at my shoes. She rings up the two 20oz bottles Pepsi Max and cheerfully says to me "Quatre dollars, et vinget-et-un cent ci vous pley" (Just like that, only spelled correctly). I hand her my card, I have no Canadian currency. I remember her asking something that I knew meant "Is that all for you?" I nodded red faced, noticing the soles on my Clarks were cracking and the shoes really needed replacing, maybe this time with a black pair.
She handed me my card and my receipt for the two drinks costing four dollars and change. I signed the slip and pushed it back across the counter. I managed to stammer, "Merci boucoups" as I scampered out the door. I climbed back into the Rav-4 thinking, aloud to no one in particular "The King of Dorkness has returned."
It was like that.
Even in the stands watching the football game I wondered if the game was being played on the campus of some sort of modeling school. Even the old people were healthy, happy, smiling, and model-esq. I felt like the frog prince's stunt double.
After the game, the members of the Blitz took off their helmets and shoulder pads and rushed over to the fence to visit with friends and family. They didn't look anything like a football team. They looked like they were auditioning for a women of football calendar and there just weren't enough months in the year to go around.
I packed up the wet computer bag, wet camera bag, wet video gear, wet tripod, wet notebook, and put the all in their respective wet bags. I slogged down the portable bleachers squelching in my wet shoes, my wet cloths clinging uncomfortably under my wet jacket. I looked worse than a clog in a medical examiner's sink. Funny thing was everyone I met on the slog over to the vehicle were completely dry and smiled a friendly smile, "Pardon moi", "Excuse me", "Bonjour", "Hi", each spoken with the sort of warmth you reserve for your closest friends during the holidays. Sitting in the car waiting for the team to return from the locker room I heard live music from a bar nearby, it was Celtic Rock, the fiddle player was on fire, and my toes squelched wetly to the beat. The air was clean and cool and the world was perfect, apart from the loss that is.
How can a city that looks so run down, with a highway system that looks like it was designed by a group of attention deficit disorder spastics having a group conniption fit with a plate of spaghetti all be so darned nice and attractive all at once? It is a mystery for the ages.
