World Cup Madness

Football fever is wearing me down.

And I don't even watch it.

It's crazy getting thrown around in all the action, hearing about it from anyone and everyone (from teachers to fellow students, family and friends) - though I don't think I've heard the cleaning aunties in school mention anything that sounds like "goal" just yet...Then again, there may be a life-sized poster of Ballack or Beckham (or both. And please tell me I got those names right) plastered to the back of that storeroom door beside the toilet. Ooh. Now I'm beginning to wonder what really goes on behind that storeroom door. Haha, don't think I should advance into the details here.

Anyway, what's probably the scariest and craziest thing about those balls is how they can completely change a person. This is the season when enemies become friends and friends become enemies and everyone gets fat, drunk and damn tired.

Take the people seated around my area, for example. Two good friends who sit behind me have since been reduced to two not so good friends, one of them an avid fan of the Germans, the other now proud president of an anti-Germany organisation. Girls, girls, girls! These balls aren't even worth fighting over!

Then there are the people who have been engulfed by their own eyebags - surprisingly though,they seem a lot more awake than me in class (fuelled by their love for the game. What can I say? It's hard to be fuelled by a love for relative velocity and the like, you know). Some arrive in school looking like they just went through a major bout of depression, especially true after the German-Italy game, which by now of course, we all know that Italy won. Others appear to be having withdrawal symptoms from their favourite drug (football, in this case) while some look like they've been fed the wrong drugs - think: poor people suffering from lack of sleep thinking that it was GERMANY that scored those 2 life-changing goals and not ITALY, then proceed to celebrate with beer (bringing in my point about getting drunk) and tubs of ice cream (here bringing in my point about getting fat) only to arrive in school the next day, hungover and with additional thigh and stomach mass, to find out that their favourite team had in fact been kicked out of the world cup. Pure joy in its highest form.

For the anti-Germany organisation, of course.