A little over a year ago, I posted an entry calling for suggestions for an all-purpose expletive replacement. I needed something to eradicate customary curse words from my vocabulary, especially to temper my on-field reactions--I think a week or so before writing the entry, I was feeling silly after causing a stoppage of play because I had yelled "f*ck!" loudly after laying out for and missing a goal, and everyone thought I had called a foul.
Since then, I have appropriated "woof" as an all-purpose expression of frustration, of "oh darn," and of general resignation. I sometimes forget to explain this to people and they wonder why I bark when a goal is dropped or I miss an appointment, but I find that in conversation, context lends the sound its proper meaning. It is mild but fulfills my need for expressing a wide range of negative emotions, and I hadn't realized until this past weekend how thoroughly I had cleansed my palate of curse words--until a bunch of 30-year-old men reminded me of just how un-genteel they sound and of all the reasons why I might not want to keep playing Ultimate after college.
I picked up with a random team this past weekend for Mixed Easterns, a 4/3 (that's men/women ratio) co-ed tournament in Devens, MA, about an hour north and west of Cambridge. I thought it was about time I started stepping out of my comfort zone of playing with only Harvard folks -- my current undergraduate friends and all the friendly alums -- and I thought Mixed would be a fun way to ease into it. (The elite women's teams still intimidate the daylights out of me.) I was pretty optimistic about it; the team seemed really fun and witty and helpful in e-mails, and I was pretty sure I already liked them.
Unfortunately, I forgot that there exists a subset of people in the Ultimate community, the folks several-years married and approaching 10 and 15-year college reunions; the folks who are not quite as athletic as they may have been in their prime, but more than overcompensate with their lust for competition; the folks who run teams like the one I played with last weekend. I forgot that I cannot stand these people, at least not on the field; and it's much harder to be forgiving of people you don't really know.
The tournament began at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning--it was already 80 degrees and the day would easily reach 100 over the next five rounds of play before culminating in a 20-minute thunderstorm replete with lightning, fire department warnings to leave the field, and a full rainbow. But what was worse than the steadily rising heat were the captains' and returners' steadily rising tempers...
"That was just f-cking lazy!"
"Play some f-cking defense! Be f-cking on their f-cking hip!"
"This is f-cking unacceptable!"
"F-ck!" "F-ck!" "F-ck!"
Even calling time outs, one of the guys felt the need throw down the disc and yell "TIME!" as if he were yelling "F-CK!" They argued calls. They threw water bottles. They made audible and mean jokes about the opposing team. I know they didn't always mean to sound angry or be assholes, but just listening to them talk that way drove me nuts. All they had to say were negative things, and really, they weren't good enough to justify it all. That, and they played a conservative game that meant looking off deep (and wide open!) cuts by pickups (yes, like me) .
I didn't go back on Sunday; it was against many principles I used to hold dear (persevering through unpleasant situations, especially physical ones; never saying no; not holding people's personalities against them) and I felt terrible about leaving the women with one less sub, but the prospect of playing another day with those men on a dubious ankle just didn't sit well with me. I decided that I play Ultimate to have fun and that Saturday was certainly not fun.
That night I had a nightmare that I cursed at Quasar on the field, and I was so scared when I woke up that I had actually done it. I am not sure when I simultaneously became such a softie and such a judgmental soul, but really. You don't curse at your team. You don't curse at people. End of story. Thanks for listening.
