And I Should've Known, With A Boy Like You, Your Middle Name Is Always, I'd Always Want You, Uh-Huh Yeah

--"Always", Rilo Kiley

Apparently, my dad's favorite basketball team is the Celtics. That came as quite the revelation on Mother's Day. I mean--you grow up with the man. You see him support the Lakers, even go to a few game with him and the rest of family. Then after, oh, about thirty years of believing his favorite team is the Lakers he drops the bombshell that his favorite team is their cross-country rivals, the Boston Celtics. Further, he states that's he's loved them as a team since he was growing up when all they used to show was Celtics games and not Lakers games.

Perhaps that's where I got my out-of-blue love for Boston, a city for the longest time I hadn't even visited yet still admired from afar. Perhaps it's genetic for me to be enamored with sports teams from there. It was always out of my hands; I had no choice in the matter.

What I find funny is that, here's my dad, living in Los Angeles and he's just like me, rooting for a team that he can't see their home games. He can't really belong to a huge following of fans that he can go watch the games with as one of a community. He can't really profess his love for the team for fear of reprisal from the diehard Lakers fans. And yet he maintains his decades-long enamoration of them because once you fall in love with a team--just like once you fall in love with a person--you can't ever fall back out of it. As Breanne says, you can't unbake the cake at that point. You're committed and that's all there is to it.

The only thing left at that point is stick with your guns and just love the dirty bastards with all your heart, come what may.

I'm proud to say that I'm glad I share this trait with my dad because the alternative, the fair weather fanaticism that is prevalent in Southern California just doesn't suit me at all. I never much loved jumping on and off the bandwagon and, apparently, neither does my dad.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers