My colleagues in the sports department have not grasped the nuance of the sotto voce collective groan.
When I tiptoe on to their hallowed turf (scuffed carpet), the negative response is usually at the fortissimo end of the decibel range, unless I am laden with lashings of home baking.
They have become used to me asking foolish questions about all manner of things sporting and like to tease me about hockey, just because two of my sons play it. They are oblivious to my learning disorder when it comes to sport. No matter how many years I spend watching something, the subtleties escape me.
Ask my family how many times they have unsuccessfully tried to explain rugby's offside rule.
Possibly my colleagues have the impression I dislike sport. I don't.
Despite my learning difficulties, I am as capable as the next person of enjoying fine sporting moments and could readily bore them by recalling events that still bring a lump to my throat.
What makes me uneasy is the notion it is somehow unpatriotic not to get caught up with the mindless jingoistic nonsense that surrounds the highly commercial Rugby World Cup.
My sporting colleagues think it is time I got with the programme, which apparently means I should be in a pre-orgasmic state about the impending RWC.
They will not be surprised I have not taken their sage advice. Instead, here are some of my RWC survival suggestions. Note the sporting nature of some of them.
• If anyone tries to discuss the All Blacks' performance after any of their games, say how impressed you were by that try scored by that lovely Jeff Wilson in the first five minutes and that clincher by Jonah Lomu right on fulltime.
• Paint something and watch it dry. (This came from the Auckland-dwelling sister, who suggested the excitement of watching the grass grow might push me over the edge. The sports department should be impressed by this family member who is possibly just as confused about the offside rule but is travelling down with her partner to attend two games over two days in Dunedin and Invercargill.)
• Gather the family together to relive a significant family sporting event. Anything goes here - from backyard cricket in 1967 to the burping contest after Aunty Mabel's inedible Christmas dinner of 1984. In my family, it will be Otago's win in the 2005 final of the Under-18 national hockey tournament and the Third Born's part in that. To annoy everybody, I will give some readings from D.S. Milford's Hockey, first published in 1938. He describes it as the pleasantest of "all the great team games".
• Round up every student with a lab coat and get them to protest outside the Otago Stadium over the treatment of Rotary Club white-coated hosts who will no longer feature on rugby occasions. It might not have the gravitas of 1981, but hey, a demo's a demo.
• Have sex, safely. Work out novel ways to incorporate the "Consent, Crouch, Touch, Condom, Engage" into your love-making. Try not to be embarrassed when your joints seize up in the crouch position and you have to call an ambulance. Tell yourself you are doing your civic duty, testing the calibre of the RWC emergency planning.
• Start a rumour that hapless Happy Feet has been found washed up on a distant beach uncomfortably wrapped in that ubiquitous RWC flag bunting.
• Halfway through the tournament, when the team everyone loves to hate has emerged, scrounge or buy a T-shirt vowing your love for that team (if you are on a tight budget, a suitable flag flogged from the bunting around Happy Feet stapled to an old garment with an appropriate slogan in permanent marker will do the trick). Look innocent and smile sweetly if anyone tries to discuss your allegiance with you.
• Ignore television. Read a book, or several. If you must read something with a sporting flavour, try Get Her off the Pitch!: How Sport Took Over My Life by Lynne Truss, which recounts her foray, as someone with no interest in sport, into sports journalism. Or, if you need something short but thought-provoking, look up Richard Boock's recent column on the shabby media treatment of women's sports.
• At the end of the six-week saga, when people are either bagging coach Henry or nominating him for a knighthood, pretend you think they are talking about the former Cook Islands prime minister or the man near Carisbrook who mends your car.
And if the All Blacks lose, I will slip silently into the sports department with a rugby ball-shaped comfort cake proclaiming "It's only a game!" spelled out in nuts. Such subtlety will not be lost on those chaps.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
