Two weeks ago, sitting in a restaurant with flat screen televisions hanging from the ceiling like decorative plants, my daughter leaned toward me from across our table and whispered, “Is the World Cup over yet?” We both looked furtively at the televisions circling the room. Although we couldn’t decipher what was happening on the screens, it was obvious that each displayed something different involving competition, stamina, and coordination. “I’m not sure,” I said, eyeing the other restaurant patrons and trying to keep our conversation confidential, “I think so. The U.S. didn’t win, though,” I said.

            My daughter and I are indifferens lusum*. It’s not a medical condition. It’s Latin for indifferent toward sports.  We don’t watch sports. We don’t play sports. We aren’t really interested in sports. We come to this state naturally.

            My father considered himself somewhat of an athlete, having played many games of touch football with such notables as the Kennedy brothers. This was in Washington, DC, in the 1950s when fraternization between the media and politicians was more common. While my father’s sports experience with the Kennedys may be a matter of record, by the time I was old enough to retain memories, my father had hung up his cleats.

            I never knew my father to play sports of any kind, with us or with anyone else, although he boasted of his physical prowess and was a very competitive person. This could be the reason we never threw the football around after dinner, practiced batting on a Saturday afternoon, or had pick-up basketball games (is that what they’re called?) at the elementary school court up the street. If you don’t compete with the most competitive person in the family you generally avoid the potential sticky problem of winning, or possibly even doing well.

            Thus, we were a non-sports family.

            And then there was this: my mother was the antithesis of a sports person, an outdoors person, a physical person. She never learned to ride a bike and had no interest in changing that situation. She didn’t like taking walks. She didn’t like being in the sun. She had grown up on a small, hard scrabble farm in South Carolina and once she had washed the dirt from under her fingernails she had no interest in doing anything physical, even if it was supposed to be fun. She liked being inside and craved a fully functioning furnace in the winter, air conditioning in the summer, and wall-to-wall carpet under her feet at all times. Unfortunately, she never got the wall-to-wall carpeting although she did finally get a full length mink coat which she said was a suitable substitute.

            Plus, she was deathly afraid of water. A near drowning in a pond when she was a youngster scarred her so irrevocably she could not abide water on her face in any way, even under the spray of a shower. She washed her face with a damp cloth. Her fear extended to her children. She refused us permission to play at the neighborhood pool, which was bad enough, but she also watched us with binoculars and a whistle from the beach during our annual shore holiday. Dressed in long sleeves and pants, wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, she patrolled the beach counting heads after each wave and signaling us to come closer to shore if we ventured too far. I don’t know what the lifeguard thought. He might have welcomed the extra set of eyes. We were mortified. My mother was a nervous wreck when we were in the water.

            It was at these vacations that my mother endured what for her must have been a horrifying experience: the annual dunk. My father insisted that my mother needed to get completely wet at least once a year despite her palpable fear of water. From the first day of our week-long vacation my mother counted down the days until she would be led into the surf, my father on one arm and my older brother on the other, for what for her must have been a year long nightmare in the making. They would lead her past the first breakers until the water was about chest high at which point she would bend her knees, hold her breath, and go completely under.

            That was it. The whole event took less than ten minutes. As she emerged from the surf the rest of the children crowded around her asking how she liked it, congratulating her on her bravery. She looked at us with the contempt she did not dare show her tormentor, her expression rigid, her skin marble-white, and headed directly back to the cottage.  My father thought this great fun. He was triumphant another year.

            I can’t really blame my lack of athleticism on my parents. I could have insisted on tennis lessons, run track in high school, played volleyball. But the truth is I just didn’t have it in me. I skipped most of my high school gym classes to smoke cigarettes under the bleachers. At my first out-of-college job I was forced by peer pressure to join the softball team. When it was my turn at bat I felt as my mother must have facing her annual dunk.  After that experience, I made sure the company I worked for did not encourage group sports.

            I don’t think it was fate that the man I married isn’t much of an organized sports person either. We probably sought each other out. He does enjoy playing tennis, and watches college football, but he is neither a dedicated player nor fan. 

            I admit that when I had children I had a fantasy that one or both would excel in athletics. This fantasy was particularly vivid every four years during the Olympics when I’d watch endless feature stories about parents who dedicated themselves to their child’s Olympic dream. Obviously, the dream was more about me than what my children wanted.  What really did matter to me was that my children grow up enjoying sports, being comfortable in their abilities (at whatever level that may be), and that they not suffer the trauma of the annual dunk or the corporate soft ball game. In other words, there would be no sports-related humiliation in our family.

            We played softball, had a basketball hoop in the driveway, sent the kids to soccer camp, paid for horseback and tennis lessons, and were members of the swim team. They enjoyed what they did but neither seemed particularly interested in continuing for any length of time or trying for a college scholarship. My daughter swims.  My son is into bike riding but I’m not sure if he does it as a means of transportation or as sport, or possibly as both.

            I realize that athletic ability (or even just enjoying playing a sport however well you do it) and being a sports fan don’t necessarily go together. All you have to do is look at some of the people in the stands at football games to come to that conclusion. I don’t understand the motivation behind men painting their flabby chests’ the team’s colors and exposing it on national television. I could be wrong, but something tells me these men are not athletic.

            My husband and I do watch the World Series (sometimes), the Super Bowl (most years), and the Olympics. My husband likes to watch college basketball on occasion and I’ve been known to sit with him to watch a college football game. I believe my son follows sports but it’s not something we talk about so I’m not sure.

            It goes without saying that participating in sports -- team or individual --keeps us humans healthy and happy. That’s why my daughter and I do our exercises or sports or whatever we call it (I do yoga) but don’t make a bit deal out of it. We focus instead on what we enjoy doing, do it when we want to, and don’t fret about what we don’t do.

            We also know that sports are part of our social fabric. It often follows you into restaurants on big screen televisions. That’s why we try to stay informed – as best we can.  It brings communities, the country, even the world (or most of it), together – at least for a short period of time.

            So Sunday evening I made sure to call my daughter to tell her that Spain won the World Cup. My husband and I watched most of the game, and I liked it.

            Really, I did.

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(I did a Latin-to-English translation on the web for “indifferent to sports” but have no idea if it’s correct.)