Sly...

I walked into the kitchen of my girlfriends house to be greeted by her extended family, just like every other weekend when there was a game on. Smiling faces wrinkled and distorted by stress and anxiety instead of the usual jubilance that comes before the football. 

We stood, we walked, we sat, we drove, and then we were at the game - greeting those in the seats around us, because we're always in the same seats. We're always there with loud voices, everyone cheering, however this week all were cheering with the exception of one uncle. He sat there silently in his seat giving off an eerie sense of serenity. But I knew - I knew that this man had more invested in this game than the team he was there to support. Trips to the team's head office, weekly journeys to all the home games, never missed an away game if the heavens allowed it. This man wasn't a fan - he was the fan, and his silence was the calm before the storm. 

I once heard a story about people on an aeroplane which suddenly began to drop from the sky, and as it plummeted helplessly to the earth the passengers on that plane weren't franticly screaming, flailing their arms about in panic. No. They sat there silently just like this uncle - making peace with their creators, or themselves. This is what I imagined it must have been like for him sitting there before the game. It was a car crash, a plane wreck, a series of tragic events occurring all at once, and all he could do was sit there and make peace with what ever outcome lay in store for his beloved team.

The game lasted for ninety four minutes, and sometimes he would stand, not to cheer but to see over those standing in front of him. Goals were scored on either side and at the end of the game our team came out on top. We were victorious and had made it through to the final round of the competition - the grand final. In the corner of my eye I saw him move. I saw a smile on his face but not the smile of surprising delight or exhausting relief, it was a smile when something you knew all along came true. I would compare it to a look of satisfaction when you read the last page of a novel first, and then read the rest just to see all the steps the author invented to create the happy ending you knew would happen all along. This was his expression. 

It was in that moment that I realised that his silence hadn't been because of stress, anxiety or a sense of uneasiness due to the approaching game. His silence was because he knew something no one else did, and the smile at the end of the game was simply at the delight he saw everyone else experiencing from what he knew all along. 

Sly...