Life Lessons from Claremont, Chicago, and Nick Hornby’s

Fever Pitch

Whether you’re from the other side of LA County or the other side of the country, traveling to and from college forces you to make some adjustments. For instance, after a summer of my mama’s cooking, I’ve got to be respectful of my dainty, off-season stomach and resist the urge to construct the dining hall version of a Double Down sandwich my first night back at Frary. On the other hand, it’s important to remember that the Chicago nightlife isn’t exactly accepting of tank tops and flip-flops. Things are just different, but overall, the home-to-school and school-to-home transitions are pretty seamless for me.

Except for one thing. The hardest part by far has been keeping in touch with friends in other cities (or states, or countries), let alone doing so in a way that doesn’t seem contrived, insincere, or too sincere. Of course I don’t completely forget about my friends while we’re apart, but there certainly is an “out of sight, out of mind” factor that comes into play. I won’t go into what it means to really keep in touch, because some people have some ludicrous definitions.

But even once you’ve decided on the mode of communication and the level of personalization, remembering and choosing a time to do it is still the most difficult part for me. Say a friend leaves me a wall post and, God forbid, I don’t answer back right away. The longer I wait, the greater the urgency and obligation to respond, but the harder it becomes to do so. It’s both awful and unavoidable. So I try to get back to people quickly, knowing that if I don’t, chances are I won’t get back to them at all. The “now or never” nature of the “whether or not to respond” dilemma makes it a relatively uncomplicated one. The question of whether or not to initiate is another matter entirely, with many more factors to consider. “When?” and “About what?” are now a part of the equation. Thankfully, sports has a solution for this.

Having finally come to the realization that in order to write, one must read, I’ve been reading a book by Nick Hornby called Fever Pitch, the story of a lifelong Arsenal supporter. You’re probably thinking, “Damn, that wanker stole the title from the Jimmy Fallon movie!”, but it’s the other way around (with Hornby serving as executive producer of the movie). Since its publication in the early ‘90s, Fever Pitch has become one of the most well-known and critically acclaimed sports books ever written. There’s a passage in the book in which Hornby, at this point a twenty-something for whom the importance of Arsenal has eclipsed everything else in life, compares his own fanaticism to another man’s support for a smaller, provincial club. It’s no contest. The other man, Neil, kicks Hornby’s ass. He goes to all the home games, where he knows every inch of the stadium and seems to be on a first-name basis with a huge percentage of the thousands who frequent it, but he also attends the less meaningful Wednesday night away games clear on the other side of England. Neil and the club began to define each other, and in the eyes of others, they had fused to form a single entity. His friends would hear the score on the radio as “Liverpool 0, Neil 2.” A victory for the club was a victory for Neil.

To a lesser extent, Hornby developed a similar connection with Arsenal, which proved to be a valuable “keep in touch” (or at least “keep you fresh in my mind”) mechanism. He recalls receiving postcards from long-lost friends after tough losses that read something like, “Sorry about Arsenal. And how have you been?” The team even helped reunite him with “non-footballing” friends. Hornby really hit it on the head with this one. I can’t tell you how many times my reaching out to a friend from high school or college or my semester abroad whom I had done a lackluster job of keeping in touch with, has been prompted by something sports-related. More often than not, it’s something simple like “Triple-double for D-Rose!” or “Wow, the Cubs are bad,” or “Vinny [Del Negro] thinks he’s gonna do well with the Clips? Pssh, Del Negro, please,” but it’s effective. By the same token, I’m sure there are times when friends of mine (both sporting and non-sporting) will see something about the Cubs on TV and think of me. They may even hear the score as “(Insert major league team here) 0, Stefan 2” (realistically, however, the scoreline would probably be the other way around these days, making it seem like I lead a very sad existence). As Hornby puts it, “I like the thought of people remembering me on a regular basis.”

Don’t we all. If you’re someone for whom keeping in touch happens completely organically and effortlessly, awesome. I wish I was better at it, but I’m not, and tons of people have the same problem. Maintaining friendships is only going to get more difficult after graduation, so I plan to continue doing it in the way that, to me, anyway, seems the least contrived.