The Serbs and Croats Sure Know How to Hug a Grudge
Interview with a Chair Thrower
By Terrance Gavan
This just in on my Twitter from the Guardian of London.
“The Australian Open is fast getting a reputation as the Fight Club of the tennis world after fans from the Serb and Croat communities clashed yesterday, hurling chairs and missiles at each other and injuring an innocent bystander.”
You may have seen it on the news or maybe on TSN, our all-star sports network that kept the Serbo-Croat riot incident on a continuous and riotously funny loop for about 72 hours last weekend.
This year’s hijinks bubbled to frothy fruition as defending Aussie Open Champion (and Serbian) Novak Djokovic hugged Bosnian-born American Amer Delic at the net after the defending champ’s third-round win. This was apparently too much for some ex-pat Serbs and Croats, now living in Australia, who harbor deep and rooted fears that letting bygones be bygones may lead to tolerance, peace and understanding between the two internecine factions.
The London Guardian reported that, “Under the hot Melbourne sun tensions boiled over in the beer garden outside center court. Drinks, tennis balls, punches and dozens of chairs were thrown, the first of which knocked a female Bosnian supporter to the ground. A witness said the woman ‘got the full force of it’ and lay on the ground for some time.”
Both Djokovic and Delic had pleaded with fans before the match to forget the past. Delic wrote on his personal blog: “As we all know, Bosnians and Serbs have had some differences in the past, however, this is not the place nor time to settle those differences,” he wrote.
What’s causing this and why, oh why, can’t the Serbs and Croats just unclench the fists and let it go?
I phoned a guy in Melbourne who should know. Professor Dukit Outic is a Serbian who holds doctorates in Functional Flagrant Anthropology and Abnormal Political Science and he teaches at Melbourne University. He was also one of the chair-wielding idiots holding forth at the Aussie Open beer tent last Friday.
“Are you sorry it happened professor?” I asked.
“Sorry? No, never. We had a few Fosters, I cheered as my countryman Novak ground that piece of crap Croat-born Yank into the ground with the heel of his very stylish Nike Avenger boot,” said professor Outic. “The trouble came when these mealy-mouthed Croats in the beer garden begin to whine like puppies about this and that and how their precious Yankee-defector Delic should have won. Bah! Babies, whiney snobs. One thing leads to another and chairs begin to fly. I take off my left boot, a nice Birkenstock, and begin to pummel a very drunk Croat on his brainless noggin. This is very normal with us; we are passionate people … we live, we love, we fight. Case, as you Canucks say, closed. No big deal.”
I was a little stunned. “But professor, a Croatian woman was taken to hospital after being hit by a flying chair, that just doesn’t seem right to me.”
“Ah, I know for a fact that was a friendly fire incident. The woman was hit by her husband, another drunk Croat. Classic case of collateral damage. And, as you said, she was a Croat. Casualty of war. No biggie. And by the way what don’t you get. You Canadians kill me. No passion, no fire, and all this peace, love and tenderness. You are phonies.”
“Phonies?” I said, a little incredulous. “Explain that professor, because you’ve lost me.”
The good professor just laughed. “You are a simpleton or what? Let me break this down for the feeble-minded Canadian reporter. I am saying that you must harbor some political grudge. Surely you have some issues, some people who have tried to separate you from your country. Usurpers, traitors, people like the Croats. People to hate. You have them. I know it. It is part of being citizen.”
“Well, hmm, let’s see,” I said, wracking my brain. “There were the Fenians.”
“Aha, there,” said Outic. “I knew it! And what did these Fenians do?” asked Dukit warming to his task.
“Well they shot poor old Prime Minister Thomas D’Arcy McGee on the Sparks Street Promenade in 1868,” I said.
“Eureka!” screamed Dukit Outic. “I knew it. There, Terrance, is something to grasp onto. Run with this. Find a mantra; wake up in the morning with the words ‘I hate the Fenians’ burning on your lips. Next time you see one, summon your inner zeal, seize your hate. Yell like a banshee: ‘I hate you Fenian!’ And then grab your Macbook Air with the hard shell aluminum body and hit that bloody Fenian over the head with it till he screams for mercy. If he doesn’t go down, grab a nearby credenza or love seat, and badda-bing, baddam-bam, badda-boom you chuck it at this Fenian with much gusto. And then you must yell at this Fenian miscreant. ‘Hah, Fenian, this is for shooting my friend Thomas D’Arcy McGee in April, 1868. Take that you traitor.’ You will, I guarantee Terrance, feel immediately and fervently, the power and the passion of the hugged grudge.”
I thought and pondered. “Problem, Professor. No Fenians. “
Dukit Outic was outraged. “No Fenians? What happened?”
“Well,” I said. “I’m not sure, but I think we just evolved and grew into country, and the Irish Catholics and the Fenian brotherhood all came to realize that as Canadians we just might have to learn to put all those old feuds with British colonialism and our Irish past behind if we wanted to flourish as a nation.”
“Ah, bull, no nation is that nice,” scoffed the Prof. “There must be something. An obnoxious griping entity that you can come to despise and hate with verve and vigor. We all need a foil, a resentment, a target for spite, even you whiney Canucks.”
And as he spoke it suddenly hit me like an airborne ottoman.
“Leafs fans, professor!” I shouted. “We all hate leafs fans!”
“Good, good! Hah, I knew it. You know what to do Terrance. Follow the worn footpath of we Serbo-Croats, and find that passion. Grasp a resentment, hug that grudge, sally forth, throw a chair, chuck a bar stool, fire a pound of chicken wings at an obnoxious Maple Leaf’s fan.
“And shout at the top of your lungs.
“That is for subjecting all Canadians to your oppressive regime and constant whining. I hate you Leafs’ fans!”
I tried it at home. Feels good.
We’ll see how it flies at Mckecks next Saturday night.
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