Voice of Reason

Yesterday one of my friends informed me that she considers me her ultimate voice of reason. Whenever she is debating what to do about something, or needs advice, she comes to me and we talk it through. She considers me a logical, objective voice, and she always likes to get my opinion.

She is definitely not the first person to say something like this. I am always being told that I'm the grounded one, the even-keeled one, the diplomat. And for the most part, it's true. I'm able to be very professional, and I am generally good at defusing situations. I am usually good at calming people down, and I can find good compromises. I value those skills about myself and I think it's really important to be able to navigate volatile situations without exacerbating the problem. I love that I am usually able to do that. So I really don't mind the reputation. In fact, I like that my friends see me that way, and that they consider my input so valuable.

But even though I am generally grounded, I still get upset about things. For example, watching sports gets me totally riled up--and I'm still pissed off about what happened last night. Germany was playing Turkey in the semifinal of the European Cup, which normally Torsten would have been really excited about. In the quarterfinal, for example, the game was close and tense and both of us were jumping up and down, screaming, and hardly able to breathe all the way through.

Torsten LOVES the European Cup. He has the passion for soccer that all Europeans seem to share, and the Euro only happens once every four years. Europeans prefer it to the World Cup, because pretty much all of the European teams who qualify are strong contenders, so the games are close and interesting starting with group play, whereas with the World Cup, the regional quotas mean that the early round play is dull.

But during last night's semifinal, I was watching tensely and shouting at the screen, but Torsten was sitting there totally bored, messing around on his computer during the whole game, which is SO unlike him. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why he was so uninterested, and I kept asking what was wrong, and he kept saying that he was just exhausted from work, but I couldn't believe that ANY work issue would ruin his enjoyment of such a close and rare game.

His attitude kind of ruined the game for both of us, though, and after the game ended (with a last-second, game-winning goal! A total gem! The kind of game that you see once every few years at most!), I interrogated him until he admitted that he had found out the score at work that afternoon, so he already knew the outcome of the game.

I know that a lot of you don't care about soccer, but if you already know what happens? It becomes nothing more than watching a bunch of people run up and down the field mindlessly. There's no suspense, there's no nail-biting, there's no fun breathlessness as each play unfolds. Yeah, it's fun to see the goals when they happen, but only to admire their technique, not because of what they mean.

The point is, Torsten would NEVER intentionally ruin the experience of watching such a great game live, and we had both implemented a media blackout for ourselves at kickoff time so we would avoid seeing the score before we got to watch the TiVoed game that evening. We had also warned our respective offices that we were TiVoing the game and did NOT want to hear the score from anyone who had looked it up online before then. Both of our offices were kind enough to be completely poker faced so as not to give anything away for us. So how the hell did he find out?

Well, it turns out that a German friend of his who lives in Europe and apparently didn't think about the time difference and the fact that Torsten was at work and couldn't have seen the game yet took it upon herself to SEEK HIM OUT and TELL HIM THE OUTCOME OF THE GAME via IM the second that it ended. She didn't even say hi first, so he didn't have the chance to warn her against telling him. She just went straight for the jugular and ruined the whole game for him, the game that he had been looking forward to for days.

So, that nice, rational, grounded attitude that I usually possess? It's GONE. I am PISSED that he had his game ruined for him, and that by extension the game-watching experience was ruined for me as well. It irritates me to no end that a single thoughtless comment by a friend could spoil his enjoyment of something that is so special to him and that happens so rarely. It makes me really sad that he didn't get to enjoy the experience that he'd been waiting for for so long.

All I can say is, at least Germany effing won the game, so there is still one more good game with a team we care about to watch this year. And if anyone ruins the finals for Torsten, I will kill them. Personally. And I might even enjoy it.

Okay, rant over. Back to my nice voice of reason now. I was actually going somewhere with this whole voice of reason thing before I got all upset about the whole Euro Cup thing again. My question was, do you have a reputation among your friends as being a certain type of person? And if so, do you think that the reputation is accurate?