In the Financial Times, Simon Kuper writes about his weekly soccer game and its weekly aftermath:
For 90 minutes I lumber around kicking people and shouting, at the end of which we have usually lost.
Then I spend the whole week thinking about it. Myself and some of the people close to me are currently going through big things–marriage, divorce, cancer, memory loss–but often, while someone is going on to me about one of the aforesaid, I find myself thinking: “Was my pass bad, or was it Carlos’s fault for not coming towards the ball?”
If someone who unduly obsesses over their own athletic performance like this is a goof–
Wodehouse even has a word for my condition. He calls it being a “goof.” “‘A Goof’ . . . One of those unfortunate beings who have allowed the noblest of sports to cut into their souls, like some malignant growth. The goof, you have to understand, is not like you and me. He broods. He becomes morbid. His goofery unfits him for the battles of life.”
–what do you call someone who unduly obsesses over the athletic performance of complete strangers?
And, more to the point, do I really want to know?
(Link via Crooked Timber.)