Finding meaning in monotony
I cleaned a fan in an old soccer shirt and it meant something.
I paid $42 for a 2011-12 Everton away shirt in 2013. This one, in fact. My soccer origin story is documented: the 2010 World Cup rolled around and we all got pressed into supporting an English team. I picked the team from my mom’s hometown without realizing Reading F.C., uh, doesn’t even go here.
That sucked for all the reasons supporting a shitty club sucks, but those didn’t bother me. I was still a Sacramento Kings fan! The Giants had only won a single World Series! The Sharks uh, yep! The Earthquakes whole thing was that they sucked but won anyway! Fun! The real problem? The games were only broadcast via radio, which was a major buzzkill.
So, I waffled around a bit on picking a second team just for fun. And I landed on Everton, in part because I am stupid but mostly because of Landon Donovan. The wonderboy Earthquakes player turned Everton loanee turned Galaxy heel was the perfect entry point — and he played for Everton in 2012, the year this hideous shirt was printed.
It never fit great but I made do. Then it stopped fitting at all and I buried the yellow kit in the bottom drawer of my dresser, seldom to think of it again. It made an appearance when changing apartments or during a very thorough cleaning, but I didn’t wear it again until a month ago, two months into renewing my sobriety. That’s a long way to say, I gained weight because I drank a ton, stopped drinking and now this ugly jersey fits again.
In my early 20s up until … let’s say now, it became custom to buy new fans once a year. You know, the shitty, $30 fans that you strategically place around your home so you can avoid running the air conditioning (if you have it at all — I do not). Replenishing the fans becomes “necessary” because they are treated like Happy Meal Toys — one use only. There is no care and maintenance package. You don’t tend to a fan.
I can feel the cringing judgment of the dads reading this and, I know. It’s not lack of ability that kept me from dismantling these fans and cleaning them regularly so much as laziness or, I don’t know, stuff. The past two years, alcoholism played a significant role in me just not doing anything and certainly not being present when I did.
So, as I sat on the floor of my apartment, reassembling two Honeywell fans, I realized it… felt good? Not breathing in a pound of dust (although, who knows!), but that I took care of this normal chore, enjoyed it and could do so because I was thinking about it rather than when I could put poison into my body again. I was wearing my yellow Everton shirt, now covered in dust, and pondering doing a load of laundry next.