My...His

Among the Thugs by Bill Buford has turned out to be one of the few books that is interesting from the first phrase. No, from the title it was already interesting. I have always been intrigued by the things people do that put them under a sort of ecstasy. Things I am not attracted to. Buford describes the weird phenomena that is to start liking something that at first seemed unpleasant:

"I SEE NOW ON REFLECTION, NOT UNLIKE ALCOHOL OR TOBACCO: DISGUSTING, AT FIRST; PLEASURABLE, WITH EFFORT; ADDICTIVE, OVER TIME" (P. 21)

His description is much like the behavior I'm so amused by. I can relate to it through soccer and sushi. Sushi is gross the first time one tries it, then you grow accustomed to it. Finally, you fall in love with it.
Soccer was different. If you don't get it, you don't enjoy it. My first time in a Colombian stadium was a year ago. I had heard of "them", the thugs. What I had heard was not good. I was very scared. I went with four of my classmates (I was the only girl there). The dangerous, if I may, where seated in different parts of the stadium than we. I saw their savage jumping and I could hear them chanting. They proceeded to take their shirts off until they became a brownish/yellowish jumping mass.
The worst part was when the match was over and we were trapped inside a herd of humans trying to get out of this place, all at the same time, through a narrow gate. My hand held my Iphone firmly. If somebody had dared to touch it, I think they would have left that stadium without eyeballs. I finally understood that to get out one had to "[resign] to the authority of [the crowd's] shove."

After I got out, I noticed how adrenaline soaked my body. I wanted to do it again. I too was starting, with effort, to like it.