Last week while I waited in line to purchase my groceries, I noticed the cashier, an elderly woman who’s line
I have spent many minutes in, was sporting a gray sweatshirt with a familiar team logo pasted on the front.
    Thinking she was a football fanatic, my boyfriend Brandon and I engaged her in conversation about the New England Patriot’s road to perfection.
    Unfortunately, the conversation didn’t go far. She explained that although she was wearing the sweatshirt, she didn’t know a whole lot about the sport.
    “I usually get out of work just in time for the end of the game,” she said, adding she wasn’t even sure how teams score touchdowns.
    The conversation got me thinking. Although this woman has no idea what whistle means or what and how football teams manage to put up six points every time they run into that large box at the end of the field, she still felt compelled to wear Patriot colors.
    I laughed with her as she announced our total and I told her sometimes, especially if you don’t watch all the time, the game of football can be pretty tricky and difficult to figure out.
    As a child, I grew up watching football games and NASCAR races every weekend. Most of the time I had no idea what the whistle meant every time the football teams would start down the field. For a long time I even thought football was timed and the whistles were blown to signal the amount of time one team acquired had expired. Of course, as I grew older I realized this was not the case at all, and the game of football is one even the spectators have to be patient with.
    During NASCAR races, I knew what to expect. Races aren’t typically the toughest sport to watch, since the cars are going around in a circle, for the most part, and the only time a flag is out is to either signal the end, beginning or a caution lap.
    I would guess, only by the fact that my father has watched NASCAR since he began watching television, I have probably seen more races in my lifetime than any other sport, although baseball and basketball are in a very close second.
    I remember in middle school how cool it was to support a racecar driver, and how that all changed when I got to high school, and suddenly NASCAR was synonymous with being a hick.
    But the Patriot fan at the grocery store didn’t let her lack of knowledge about the sport get in the way of her support.
    Later than night, as I watched another rerun of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a show I watch on a daily basis, the episode depicted sports fans. Raymond’s wife, who is a stay-at-home mom, decides she and Raymond need to bond and do more things together, so she starts watching sports with him even though she doesn’t know much about sports. At the end of the episode, Raymond is confronted by his wife after she discovers he asked his family to join them for the game, so he doesn’t have to watch it alone with her.
    It is important for people to be fans. It is important for people to have a team to cheer for, even if they aren’t sports writers, players or enthusiasts.
    Although I have grown up around sports, either watching or playing them, I think the cashier had it right as she handed Brandon and I our receipt.
    “I might not know how they get the touchdown, but at the end of the day I support them and I think they would appreciate that,” she said.
- Ashley St. Michel