I used to laugh at sports fans. At football fans more than others. A bunch of meatheads who claim to hate anything ‘soft’ but fail to show emotional restraint when it comes to their favorite team. Of all the idiocy practiced by sports followers around the world, their funniest moment is when their team is losing an important game.

I remember when I was in London during the Champion’s League final between Liverpool and AC Milan. I watched it in a bar filled with supporters in red shirts. Halfway through the match, it was clear that the English club just weren’t cutting it. There were cheers – the team did show occasional spurts of brilliance – but mostly there were sighs. Missed opportunities, lousy dribbling, bad passing. By halftime, it was 3-0 AC Milan. Was there hope in the room? Yes, but dwindling. Players were blamed, coaches were criticized, managers were discredited. Twenty minutes into second half, what little hope remained was slowly being drained like piss in a clogged urinal. Players were cursed, coaches were threatened and the mere mention of the manager’s name broke glasses around the bar.  Few more minutes later, the crowd began to get up one by one and leave. There was no clearer sign of dying morale than the sight of unfinished pints of lager on a deserted table. A couple more minutes later, the place was almost empty. The remaining patrons had turned their backs on the TV, pretending to have a conversation about anything except football, and desperately concealing the twitch in their ears each time the commentator noted a change in ball possession.

Barely five minutes before the final whistle, Liverpool scored. Eyebrows were raised around the room like a Mexican wave in a stadium. The patrons began to turn around, just to make sure that the commentator wasn’t joking. Smiles accompanied a weak applaud, while somebody began to hum a football song that was otherwise sang in a shouty chorus. Then, the laughably amazing happened. Liverpool scored again. The deserters, whom I was sure should have been home by then, started to flock back in, as if they were just hanging around outside waiting for their cue. There weren’t just a few scattered cheers anymore – the whole bar was suddenly alive. This wasn’t just hope. This was certainty; that there is a God, that there is football, that when both facts are combined, Liverpool still had a chance of winning. Even if there were only two more minutes to go.

And they did.

The cheers were deafening. Old men who looked too frail to feed themselves were dancing around with glasses raised to the roof. Players were praised, coaches were commended, managers were immortalized in impromptu ballads. Suddenly, being a supporter never felt so right. And all the pain and misery that each of them went through for most of the match were forgiven. Dammit, they never even happened.

Those less passionate about football would probably have a lot to say about grown men crying over a match. But the truth is, we’re all alike.

Life is the ultimate sport. And unless you’re exceptionally disturbed, we’re all born supporters. Life can thrash your senses and drag you through patches of emotional despair; day in, day out; with no other choice but to hold on; shielding your bruised loyalty from the cruelty of your everyday existence. But the moment Life favors you with a sign of hope, you’re back to waving the flag.

I woke up this morning with a sense of forgiveness. I wasn’t surprised when I found that I could type an entire four-page article in two hours. It just flowed. Wouldn’t stop until lunch, when I headed outside for some fried chicken. Coincidentally, the kids from the grocery store walked in as I was finishing a crispy wing. I thought their presence would upset me, or at the least annoy me. But it didn’t. And when they sat eating and staring at me, the smile I offered them was a genuine greeting.

One of the kids smiled back through a mouthful of chicken and was quickly slapped by another sitting beside him. The smiler returned the gesture by flicking the boy’s Adam’s apple while he drank a cola. The boy gagged, and a fragment of chicken escaped through his nostril.

I laughed all the way home.

It was a good day.  

 - Taken from the upcoming novel ‘Half Fiction’.