On Being Feisty

In first year I had the greatest roommate ever, Ali. The ONLY ONLY ONLY time I can remember ever being upset at her was when we asked our friend which one of us would win in a fight. He said that Ali would.

The only way they could make me feel better was to reassure me that I could pummel the heck out of any other girl in the residence. I kept on saying "But I have feist! I have feist!" It was really important to me that feist was recognized as a valuable fighting skill.

Considering how badly I wanted to win theoretical fights, you'd think I'd be really eager to initiate some actual fights. I've actually only ever been in one fist fight. I was in grade 1. It was against a grade 2 boy. He was trying to ruin our sand fort or something? I don't know, I was a new kid in school and didn't have very many friends. I guess I thought I could make some by scratching poor Joel on the forehead because that's what I did.

In soccer I get riled up pretty easily. One time in an indoor soccer tournament, the game before mine featured the kind of fight movies should be made of. Two girls. The rolling around hair pulling and biting kind of fight. I was so jealous.

When it comes down to it though, I don't fight with my fists. I've had plenty of opportunity and reason to swing a quick right hook, but I never do. Sure, I pull jerseys and sometimes purposely step on people if they fall in front of me- but that's all part of the game.

No, the way I prefer to fight is with words.

I am FEISTY with words. I play forward. And seriously? Defenders are SO easy to piss off. When I get angry my vocabulary suddenly grows by thousands of words and I spew out insults that would make Shakespeare consider a re-write.

Or sometimes I simply say "Yeah? Well you're fat." Then they get so angry that they over commit and lunge left and right. You can dangle them like a piece of string. And then you score and when you're walking back to centre you can even put salt in the wound by saying something like "you really shouldn't let me walk the ball in like that."

Yes, when I play soccer, I'm the biggest bitch in the world.

I had a playoff game yesterday, and my team was getting outplayed SOOO badly and I was just not on my game. So I was already frustrated. The refs weren't calling anything so it was getting pretty physical. There was one guy with a really far throw- he would front flip with the ball and have so much momentum that it would go like half the field. But in the run and flip, he would always move about 3 metres forward from where the ball actually went out.

So one time he was about to throw, and I said "ref, can you make him back up? He always ends up 3m ahead of where he should be" and he said, "with a throw this far it's not like 3m matters". Hello- full of himself. Anyway then he threw it and he missed his target so the ball went out, and I said "hey! Maybe you were 3m back your player could have got that! Bummer!". And he told me to F off. I guess I deserved it.

My favourite soccer fight ever though was my sister's. She got called a BRACE FACE and A TROLL. WHAT THE HECK. She played the "use big vocabulary to make them feel inferior" card. But... brace face? Wow. If I ever resort to that... somebody beat me up. (If you can. Because I'm feisty.)