Let’s play darts!

Sports are great . . . I love them all.

I love the competitive element, the tension build-up, but above all, the ability of the human body to exceed itself. 

There are times where you see an athlete perform at extraterrestrial levels and you consider yourself lucky to have been able to witness the event.

What a boost, what an adrenaline kick.

However, not all sports are that brilliant, unfortunately.  

I mean, look at cricket. Nothing self-exceeding about stopping for tea, nothing extraterrestrial about quitting for dinner, but hey, it goes kinda nice and slow . . . even if one is as tardy  as an  in-bred snail in reverse, one could keep up, easily.

All sports have their advantages!

Up till I moved here 14 years ago, I was quite active myself. Gymnastics, softball and dancing, to name a few, but my big passion was ice-hockey. Since I couldn’t skate they stuck me in the goal where I stayed for 12 years. Loved every bruised, injured and hurt minute of it.

Over the last ten years my active interest in sports became more and more passive, to which I decided I should adapt a sport that more suits my lifestyle.

I have found two!

Darts and pool. Both readily available in my surroundings, with training hours more than acceptable, and fees vary from evening to evening . . . depending on the amount of liquids served. Which means at times those “fees” might be extraordinarily high.

But then again, you rarely remember what you paid on those nights and, therefore, a mere detail that can be easily blamed on the “sports-club” staff (one never drinks too much, one is always overcharged!).

So, I am a happy baby but for one . . . logic.

Now, pool stems from billiards, I guess.

Billiards:  one stick, two white balls, add a red one so we can play with them . . . (a male thing?) . . . logical.

But pool? Suddenly there are loads of colored balls (male wishful thinking?) that need to go into many different holes (wishful thinking again I presume). Why? Why all these balls, why these pockets, and why does the black one go in last, as usual? Did you ever think of that?

Same with darts. Great idea, trying to hit numbers with small arrows. Must stem from hunting, again a male thing. You’ve got to hit something to survive, like a deer, or, in our case, a bull’s eye. That’s logic. One can understand where it comes from.

But did you ever look at a dart board? Now where is the logic in the way all these numbers are scattered over the board? Why is the 3 under the 20, between the 19 and the 17? Why is the 20 between the 1 and the 5, etc?

There is no mathematical logic in it whatsoever. Well, not that I found anyway, but I ain’t no Einstein.

There can be only one truly sad conclusion: two worldwide acclaimed sports, with their own world-leagues and championships, have probably been created in some rowdy bar during a nasty pub brawl when one intoxicated gentleman decided to attack his opponent who had just flooded the billiards table with a pitcher of beer (hence the name pool)  with the billiards stick. And missed! Several times! Hence the holes in the now pool table.

During all this, another gentleman, after downing two bottles of tequila with beer chasers, decided to randomly write some numbers on a wall and stopped the fight by letting the pugilists act out their aggression by throwing something pointy, like a stiletto.

And these are now our areas’ favorite pastimes.

Boy, are we in trouble!