Geek and Freak Sports

The other day while visiting Earl and Countess Nib I watched a DVD called How to Be a Player. The DVD was produced by the Duncan Yo-Yo company and is a compilation of yo-yo tricks. A few minutes after the DVD began the ever young Countess Nib and the ever lovely Lady Nib wandered off to have a chew fat while my father and I watched the DVD. It occurred to me while watching the DVD that yo-yoing, serious yo-yoing, is pretty much a sport (and I do mean sport) that appeals to males. In the whole of the DVD there was only one female. Everything was boys and young men. Geeky girls spend their time doing something else, though I don't know what -- modern dance perhaps. And, let's face it, yo-yoing on a serious level is a pretty geeky past time. There are baseball heroes, football heroes, basketball heroes, even bicycling heroes. But there really is no such thing as a yo-yo hero who is known outside the world of yo-yo aficionados. Being a yo-yo champ is like being a Frisbee Golf champion. In other words one will not get rich from endorsements for beer, cars, Viagra or even from the manufacturers of yo-yos or Frisbees. Being a serious yo-yoist is like being a ukulele player. No matter how good one is, the world at large sees one's skill as just screwing around when, in fact one has spent hours of disciplined practice to learn how to do a flawless Brain Twister or play Little Grass Shack.

Another sport that receives the same public "honor" as yo-yoing is hacky-sack, or as more properly called, footbag. Hacky-sack (I use the trademarked name because that's what my crowd has always called it) is seen as the purview of Grateful Dead fans killing time between sets, hippies waiting for their buzz to take effect, or college students trying to avoid studying. But a good sacker is a person who has spent a good deal of time perfecting his (and hacky-sackers are overwhelmingly male) skill for either the free-style, circle or net forms of the game. The sacker is often seen, while practicing in a park or village green, as a person on his way to heroin addiction while the English footballer, Mexican or Argentinean soccer players bouncing soccer balls off their knees and heads for hours on end are considered athletes because they are playing against others while the hacky-sack player is often challenging himself. And what fun is there, as far as society is concerned, in challenging one's self instead of knocking someone else down on his fundament?

I was while watching the yo-yo DVD that I realized, and I mean really realized, that I'm a geek. I rather fling a yo-yo than play baseball and would much rather kick a hacky-sack than swing a golf club. I know little about computers, my advanced math is weak, I can fix a car and build an airplane or a boat, I seem to have the geek (and maybe freak since I love the Grateful Dead) mindset about sports. And having realized my true condition at the age of fifty-two I have no choice but to go to Lenscrafters and buy a pair of black framed glasses, preferably with tape over the bridge, and embrace my geekdom. And I'll have to buy a new hacky-sack in pig skin just to offend a Mohammedan.