Sports Widow

One Sports Widows Story

July 23, 2007 8:00 AM | 0 Comments

To describe myself as un-athletic would be a gross understatement. For years, simple acts like trying to throw a Frisbee or skip a rock have sent onlookers into paroxysms of laughter.

Growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1960s, I was oblivious to sports. This is incomprehensible to most men I know, who can’t believe I wasn’t avidly tracking the tragic exit of the Milwaukee Braves* or the promising debut of the Milwaukee Bucks or the incredible feats of the Green Bay Packers. In fact, the Pack is the source of a recurring nightmare I have had throughout my life.

I threw bats at people. I dropped bowling balls, sending them backwards instead of down the alley and toward the pins. I swung helplessly like a pendulum from a knotted rope while a diabolical gym teacher barked, “Just shimmy up and touch the ceiling.” And, as if these humiliations weren’t enough, everyone else knew of my deficiencies, and I was typically among the last chosen when it came to team selections.

I blame this woeful un-athleticism on four, possibly five things:

• 1960s society, which did not encourage girls to participate in sports;
• The Southern culture in which I was raised, which grew fragile flowers instead of tomboys;
• A father who shared sports with my brothers, but did not admit me to the club;
• My inner city grade school, which had an athletic program that consisted of annually administering The President’s Challenge Physical Activity & Fitness Test with no practice sessions in between; and
• Lastly, I have to face the possibility that, when it comes to athletics, I just may have been dog-paddling at the shallow end of the gene pool.

Years later, when my husband proposed to me, he briefly considered giving me a sports test similar to the one in the then-popular movie Diner, but he changed his mind. He knew if our relationship hinged on this, his bride I would not be. So, instead, we settled on a verbal prenuptial agreement that March Madness® belonged to him.

But March Madness crept into April madness, which signaled the onset of Major League Baseball season, which led to NFL and NCAA football season, NHL Hockey, PGA Golf, NASCAR auto racing, NBA basketball, and before I knew it, I was regularly experiencing the life of a Sports Widow. The symptoms manifested in my husband were an inexplicable distractibility and lengthy absences from social gatherings, where I would eventually find him glued to an aerial television in the bar. Now, reminiscent of the episode in The Twilight Zone where the earwig has finally emerged from its host’s brain, instead of relief, I experience horror at the discovery that the organism was pregnant and laid eggs. With my three children comes a whole new generation of potential sports fans, jocks and addicts. And further isolation.

And, so I stand at the widow’s walk, gazing out at a roiling sea of sports obsession, feeling mournful, disenfranchised, perplexed. Do I really want to spend years on this lonely perch, waiting for my husband, and now my children, to return to me? Even worse, do I want my own children to repeat my agony and defeat? Or is there some way I can begin the slow conversion from sports-challenged to sports-savvy?

I have reached this conclusion: I have a choice. I can mourn or even resent the dominant role sports plays in my life or I can embrace it. I choose to travel on a journey of engagement. And, for once, I’d like some teammates, which is why we founded Sports Widow Entertainment, LLC. After all, Life is a Contact Sport. Seize the Remote©.

Nan Hall, the Sports Widow

*The Milwaukee Braves moved to Atlanta and become the Atlanta Braves in 1965. The Milwaukee Brewers were established in 1970 in an MLB American League expansion move.
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