A New Rivalry at Home

I have been dating the woman that I will marry next May for more than three years now, and during that time, we have been through our ups and downs.  Our relationship has been able to survive months of distance, an uncertain future after graduating from the undergraduate university at which we met, and more little arguments than I could ever count.  We are only three days away from what is going to be one of the biggest challenges of our relationship.  You see, my fiancé is a White Sox fan. 

Next Tuesday, we will be going to a game together, and for the first time we will be supporting opposite teams.  My fiancé has been good enough to adopt the Cardinals as her “National League Team” while she is dating me and living in St. Louis.  There have even been times that she has been genuinely excited about the successes of the Cardinals.  While I have claimed that the White Sox would hold a similarly high status for me in games that we have gone to in Chicago, I can completely understand her hesitance to be truly excited about a team that she only adopted as her own recently and as a favor to someone else.  Next Tuesday, we will not be trying to pretend anymore that we are fans of each other’s team, and it should be an interesting first for us.

My fiancé and I were thinking about what kind of a bet we should come up with to make this series a little more interesting, as if that is something that we will need.  We settled on the old stand-by bet for the two of us: loser buys dinner at one of our favorite restaurants here in St. Louis.  I guess we could have gone for the bet of what team’s jersey our first child is given, or which ballpark he or she will see the first game in.  I guess we could have gotten really interesting, and based all of the fan representation of our future hypothetical children on this series.  Then again, I guess with the Cardinals playing poorly and the White Sox getting into first place in the American League Central Division, maybe we should keep our bets small for now.

There is a very real chance that the two of us will end up in Chicago at some point in our futures, and any bet about the sporting souls of our future children may come very much in handy living behind enemy lines.  I can only hope that at the end of next week, my fiancé and I are still on speaking terms.  It should be an interesting night filled with fighting and baseball, next Tuesday, and for now, the winner will be happy with dinner.