I can understand the interest in motor racing, a sport where fitness and finesse play an integral role in who emerges the victor.
I can understand the thrill of watching a celebration that involves the spinning of tyres and spraying of dust and smoke.
Let’s put it in the same category as a shoey, also a motor racing tradition. Smelly, yes. Unhygienic, probably. Worth it, probably not.
But elite athletes have got to do what elite athletes have got to do.
One thing about motor racing is that it’s an elite sport. It takes money to race, and even more money to compete at top level.
Take Formula 1 which is a shootout of a mere 20 drivers in unequal cars, spending millions to showcase skills of immense precision at high speed.
If you exceed expectation, you might get to drive again a year later.
There are few winners, and many losers. Think about that for a minute.
When I went to school, if you couldn’t make the cricket team, you played tennis.
I played tennis. Now of course, tennis is a career for those who are good at it.
If you make the top 1000 players in the world, you might still have to live out of the back of a van, but the prize money will pay for your wheaties in the morning, and noodles at night.
Rank as one of the 1000 best car drivers in the world and you’re stuck in an Uber waiting for the lights to change behind a family that’s just been through the fast-food drive through, more intent on passing each other a chip than they are hitting the speed limit in three seconds.
Which, I suppose, leads me to my point.
What I can’t get my head around is the thrill of hooning.
So I try to put my mind into the head of a hoon to imagine what morsel of delight loud engine noises and unnecessary destruction of public spaces might generate.
Why? Because I’m empathetic. Because I want to understand you, and what makes you tick in a bid to make myself more tolerant to your senseless tribal nonsense.
You were probably that kid who, in the sand pit at school, spent his lunch time driving toy trucks into each other, and who now tailgates dangerously on highways in a b-double you call your oasis because it’s got a curtain you draw between the front seat and a fridge.
Don’t get me wrong. That’s not a bad thing. Keep a safe distance from the car in front of you and I’m your man because you’re the one filling our supermarket shelves with product and making our economy turn.
All your life you’ve wanted to be that guy doing the burnouts.
Then, you hear that there’s an event where screeching features as the main act in a crowd of rebellious types who see police as the enemy and a baseball bat as their friend.
You scream as someone with more dollars than sense goes through three sets of tyres they leave embedded on the road of a suburban neighbourhood.
While you’re hollering for the next buffoon to bring his car to the centre of the ring like a breakdance move in the 80s, you’re probably realising that after all those years of thinking you too could be the one creating the smoke, that you’re still one of the crowd.
At least you’re not being arrested, and unlike the one who wasted their dole money on grease, you’re not impacted quite the same by cost-of-living pressures.
Instead, you’re sitting on the side of the road – a moron cheering morons – thinking you’re part of some sort of cult movement.
And you’re right. Like most cults there’s one leader and a whole heap of followers who end up eating the chocolate put under their pillow, drinking the Kool Aid that turns your brain mushier than its current state.
I get it. You’re vulnerable.
You think you’re part of something special, and who the hell am I to tell you you’re not.
The only position I’m in is to tell you that my neighbourhood isn’t the place for your small-minded behaviour, and that unlike a 15-year-old in a stolen car, I pay my rates and taxes with one peace mission in mind.
That being a quiet Sunday afternoon.
Hey Wanda, is that steam coming from my ears, or is my empathy paying off? Surely there’s a game of tennis on pay television.
