Vile Banter

Every sports betting enthusiast or gambler – if you choose a higher moral ground – has had this distinct moment in his career: staying late up the night refreshing a live score site or an app. Mind you, this is a feat he (most gamblers are of the male gender) never achieved while in school or if he is still in school has never made head or tail of the advantages unless it involves nudity and free drugs. 

 

The sole purpose of staying late at night is to follow a minute by minute progress of a team he bet on especially with school fees – confirming he is a moron – or the last team on his betting list that will guarantee a windfall. At that moment, there are many glittering things he will buy, and the mere thought of possessing them is enough to give him an erection.

Unless you are a Kenyan politician, karma does not just sit by and watch make lots of money without working hard for it. The reason could that all the luck apportioned to the males in your lineage were all used up by one of your fathers in his attempts to woo a fairy princess. And so, you will lose your school fees, and, more painfully, your sleep.

It was a sure bet, you tell yourself, banging your head on a hard surface. Once in a while, you’ll gather your friends or pretty much anybody who is interested in your ‘team moja iliniangusha’ story, and go over the minute details of your gambling exploits, hoping they’ll bow down their heads and make you a ceremonial gambling god.

That’s never the case because they too have their own stories, some better than yours especially if they did not bet on school fees. You will hear of a story where Chelsea, despite having close to useless odds, therefore poised to win by a landslide margin, gets held to a 2-2 draw by a lowly Norwich.

“Nilikua nishinde 800k,” the man will tell you and you will believe him even when he is lying. “It was the last team, and I thought I had already had the money.” And that was the last time Chelsea was Chelsea to that gambler. It officially morphed to Chelshit, even if you are a diehard supporter and were once willing to bet on your own two balls – biological ones just for the sake of arsenal fans.

The advent of betting added another dimension to football fanaticism: crude and vile banter. It is no longer about how a team plays shitty football, but about how that shitty football prevented me from winning a windfall, thereby changing my fortunes and the fortunes of all the generations after me, even up to the fifth one. And the emotions expended in it is so real that it can cut through steel reinforced concrete.

Gone are the days when a game of football was just that. Despite the fact that Manchester United is a limping team, no self-respecting fan will bet against it even though they blatantly and boisterously talk about its complete shittiness. It is often a welcome loss in the case that it  has lost and thereby making one lose money, because it only confirms that you have always passionately hated Man U, and there’s no way you could ever ever bet on such a loser team. You call it names referring to a donkeys gonads.

Sometimes, while watching a game of football, and it is open consensus that majority of the patrons have bet on a certain team, be sure that banter is legally prohibited on that team people have bet on. These are people capable of rage that can move mountains. They’ll order your swift removal from the place because you are causing financial disturbance in manner likely to cause economic depression. Worse still, they could have been sent by their wives to bring a packet of milk and decided to bet on a team they were sure to win.

Facing the danger of being called stupid for the hundredth time, the man of the house will do everything to bend the force of nature just to make sure he retains his money, but plus a little more. Often, dharma (the law of cause and effect) sits by and calls the man stupid in advance, making sure Barcelona, with odds of 1.2, losing miserably to Las Palmas. A one-nil loss. No over 2.5, no Messi goal.

And in that state of utter disappointment, the least that man can do, even though he can constitutionally punch you, is call Barcelana  by certain organs found in the nether regions, which, by definition are overused. And this is not reserved only to the moment he lost his money, but eternally. Even if Barcelona wins by ten goals, he will find something he thinks is deragatory and says with Miguna’s conviction. And he will feel good about until you tell him about how shitty Chelsea is, and he happens to be a Chelsea fan.