What makes a fan...

Fan. Short for fanatic. A person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause. The use of the word "fan" is kicked around with regularity these days. Sports, movies, books.... people... When you boil it down though, a fan or fanatic could be pretty derogatory. Try it some time. Call someone a fanatic. They will probably react as if you were calling them a flag hating war monger just wanting to kill people... call them a fan, they might proudly display a tattoo of a team logo while singing a song. The subtle key is how you use the word in most cases.

The reason I bring up this point is due to a discussion I had with a co-worker the other day. It all started with a txt message saying "I'm almost ashamed to be watching this game..." For those of you who don't know, I’m a pretty big football fan. It doesn't matter if it’s high school, college, or the NFL... I will watch it. I have been known to be cruising down back roads and pull my truck over to watch a Friday night 2A school playing iron man football for nothing more than pride. Hmmmm, unreasoning enthusiasm... Anyways, I don't particularly get fired up over things. Sure I’m excitable, but I don’t go dressing up like character from movies, buy sound tracks because one song on it is from a band I like, or buy books just because person X wants to spill all over the New York Times their latest "send me money because I spoke" bound pile of paper. Adjusting my sideline team cap, the response hits the inbox on my phone... "Well, at least they scored... finally" This feeble attempt to make me feel good, was in fact a classic dig that the two of us share quite often. There tends to be a few unwritten rules among men... well at least as I see it. Wives/girlfriends are off limits, always offer to buy the first round, handshakes are as good as your signature, and insults are not personal, just good form. So I reply with a weak half hearted zing knowing full well the assault is on its way. At this point I am still on the edge of my chair yelling at the officials on my screen, standing up and cheering on the few good plays I see... and of course...proudly beating my jersey into my chest. Half time has past... adjustments made by the team are just not working. Text messages are flying into me like I was on the line during the battle of the bulge. Shells of insults blasting in my face, flashes of "you suck" are stinging my ear drums...

So to the point of what makes a fan... is it the passion? Is it simply pledging allegiance to a certain something? Is it stalking? I type this as two footballs sit to my left, visor on my head, team logo t-shirt on, coffee cup with the bold colors of the stadium shine, the team report playing in my ear on a pod cast, a picture of the teams cheerleaders peeking from behind this page on my screen's background......hmmm...shit.

My name is ChuCK_AmuCK. I am a fanatic. My Houston Texans lost on Sunday 38-17. No, it wasn't even that close. Yes I suck.