Wednesday, June 22, 2011

My Boston Shirt

I don't actually look this good in my BOSTON t-shirt

Ok, so I have this shirt that says "BOSTON" on the chest. I like this shirt, because I bought it while I was in Boston on business.

Yes, I was actually in Boston, on business. How weird is that? It still freaks me out a little.

The company I worked for needed someone to train a classroom full of new hires. We have locations in Burlington and Boston. No one in Boston could train them as well as I could, so my company paid to fly me down and put me up in a hotel for 18 days to train them.

I am proud of that fact. I was good enough at my job for someone to be willing to pay to fly me to Boston rather than have someone there do the job less well than I would. They even put me up in a Westin hotel. Ok, the Westin isn't exactly Ritz Carlton, but it's a far cry from Best Western.

While I was in Boston I picked up a souvenir t-shirt that read "BOSTON" across the chest. I love that shirt. I'm proud of what it represents to me. Its not often that I succeed in the business world ... ok, so this was the first and quite likely the only time ... so it's nice for me to have a reminder that I had done so, if only once.

So the other day I was wearing my "BOSTON" t-shirt. For me, it was just another day. Unbeknownst to me, there was some kind of big hockey game going on. I was visiting friends down on Kennilworth and was standing on the sidewalk saying goodbye when someone drove by and yelled something at me from their car window.

I turned to my friends and said "Did they just call us prostitutes"? They said, no, they were yelling at me for being a Boston fan. I was a bit taken aback by that. But, I thought, no big deal. I said goodbye, got on my bike and rode home.

I was yelled at and honked at several more times on the way home. One guy gave me the finger.

It still surprises me sometimes that people take sport games so seriously that they can't imagine that someone else might not actually give a shit. Hockey is great, but come on, it's a game. You wouldn't yell at someone for wearing a Monopoly t-shirt, even if you preferred Clue, so why would you yell at someone for liking a different sports team?

It saddens me to think that some peoples' worlds are so small that they can't even conceive the notion that someone might actually wear a "BOSTON" t-shirt for reasons other than a silly hockey game. Not everyone has their emotions ruled over by the tyrannical random acts of fate that is represented in the outcome of a game.

So, if you ever find yourself getting angry at someone for liking something different than you, try to relax and enjoy yourself buddy. It's just a freaking game. Oh, and try not to burn your freaking city down if you lose. That shit's just whack.

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