Don’t we all speak … football?

Over this couple of weeks of World Cup fever, I have come across people whom I have met but not talked to in random occasions and out of nowhere, they would start dumping their soccer related opinions to me and without really listening to what I have to offer in return, they would disappear back into their own worlds and literally disappeared. Today’s occasion was different.

I don’t even know this gentleman’s name. He has won some long service award of 25 or 30 years, worked in the same department as me, but I have not talk to him for the 3 years of so of my employment in the very same department. I blame it on the age gap. Anyway, today I bumped onto him in the restroom and all of a sudden, at the washing basin, he looked at me in this radiance smile and a level of energy that I have never discovered from our brief encounters over the years. He spoke and talked about the World Cup final. I threw in a few insights – after all, I was an avid audience of the World Cup tournament – and that triggered him into an even livelier speech on the controversy that happened during the final.

Towards the end of the conversation, or rather his long speech (as I seldom interjected, just offering insights), I gently pointed out to him that it is the same referee who sent off Rooney (of course we were in topic of the send-off of Zindane). Rather than just taking my words for it, he silenced for a moment, pondered, then exclaimed, “Yes, the Argentine!”. And I saw that he suddenly saw me in a different light, felt that he has discovered something important, and disappeared back into his own world … and again, literally disappeared.

Don’t we all speak “football”?