Watching My Granddaughter's Soccer Game

This past Saturday I spent an hour watching my 7-year-old granddaughter play soccer. I try not to be one of the soccer grandpas, rooting too loudly for a game that's supposed to be fun--providing the little kids with excellent exercise plus the opportunity to learn sportsmanship and ball-handling skills.

It was a good game, and I noticed that my granddaughter played with greater focus and pleasure than she had last year. She looked like a real player, and had a couple of excellent passes, one of which went for a goal.

Only later did I wonder: Could such an event impact my addiction? Was I, at times, getting a high from the play, and not merely enjoying watching my granddaughter having a fine time with teammates on a sunny late summer morning?

Sports watching addiction is subtle. If you quit watching TV, it's there lurking on your desktop or in the newspaper or on radio.

I worried for a while--would the experience make me now want something "better," a quick look at the TV? That bad effect hasn't happened. I did overhear that the NFL season is about to begin. I hadn't thought about it all during the preseason. I was hardly aware that the preseason was even happening. Nor have I clue about the baseball races.

I am, in other words, quite free of the addiction, and that makes me think that I can safely watch my granddaughter's next game.

Embedded Sports

My wife and I recently watched NOTES ON A SCANDAL. This highly rated movie contains a brief scene of high school kids playing soccer. The scene probably was included so that a male student could remove his shirt and show his handsome chest to the older female protagonist--a teacher who eventually has an affair with him.

The shots distracted me because suddenly--if just for a few seconds--I found myself watching a sporting event. It was different, of course, from watching a pro game. The outcome didn't matter and it was just make-believe. And yet, the action drew me in. I was--momentarily--a spectator.

Does this mean I need to stop watching movies if I am to avoid watching sports? I don't think so, but I imagine that if I watched a movie devoted to sports--say, Rocky--I would get a "hit" perhaps as strong as attending an actual sporting event.