Seedy underbellies (in more ways than one)

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Growing up sometimes presents itself as a kind of strange multiverse. A world in which the comfort of experience confines you to particular spots in the world around you.

You take a certain route to work. You buy your pepper-steak pies from one shop, your morning coke at a single garage, you drink your sundowners at the Scud.

On Fridays you hit the booze in the usual place with the usual people, go to the same Liquid Lounge and listen to the same DJ playing the same tunes you’ve been hearing for 20 years.

Saturdays find you gocharing that lekker sausage, outside the customary butchery or bottle-store, with people you’re used to, drinking the usual poison at the usual pace.

See, it’s interesting to consider just how much we are creatures of habit. It gets more intriguing when something shakes your routine so violently, encroaches on your schedule so abruptly that you question your entire existence and the cocoon you have built around yourselves.

You start to wonder whether, in carving out your comfort zones and peer groups, you have limited your scope of experiences, and by swimming in your channel, you’re missing the obvious under-currents of a life you will never know.

Yesterday, for exampuru, I discovered that there is an entire sub-culture in Harare, where women meet on Sundays and play hockey. The catalyst for this new and intriguing find was my sister, who was invited to play for some club.

Forsaking my regular Naked Sunday, I went along with my lover in tow and next thing you know, my little Field (hockey) Mouse is in a league game, scores a goal, dubbed new fish and is a part of the team.

Where she got the energy to suddenly run around 35 minutes each way, carrying a fecking log no less, on a Sunday afternoon I have no goddamn clue!

Time to dust off those social soccer boots, my fellow sedentary boozers.

Cos  if the missus can do it, goddamn it so can I.

Published by Joe Black

6 Replies to “Seedy underbellies (in more ways than one)”

  1. Good on you. We have our rugby, some have soccer, tennis, hockey, etc.

    It’s good stuff son. we need to play and I don’t just mean the other kinds that are spinning in your head.

  2. I need to get back to regular tennis on Saturday afternoons, and work my way from there.

    Although touch rugby is the furthest I’m ever gonna go, methinks 🙂

  3. “Where she got the energy to suddenly run around 35 minutes each way, carrying a fucking log no less, on a Sunday afternoon I have no goddamn clue!”

    blue pills anyone?

  4. First off, it is Field Hockey, not Hockey. This is not up for debate.

    Secondly, I really enjoyed this. Sure the motivation for running around is all well and good but I like the calling bullshit on that “creature of habit” myth.
    Habits are easy. You do them without thinking and they become lazy instincts.

    Those under-currents you speak of are life. Those are experiences and you’ll miss them if you always chose the easy, well trodden routines. There’s nothing wrong some continuity of experience but once it does become a cocoon, life gets too damn predictable and frankly too damn dull

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