when you wear a jersey...

I love sports, and one of the things I love about sports is the uniforms. Hockey and Baseball, by far, have the coolest jerseys in sports, with Football taking 3rd (basketball jerseys are only cool to wear if you play basketball or are under the age of 12)

Growing up in a sports fanatic household, I was dressed in everything Bears, Bulls and White Sox for the first 10 years of life.(Hawks stuff came a bit later) over time I amassed a large collection of sportswear, and to this day, still own over 100 sports jerseys of all different sports teams.

Wearing Chicago sports wear in a different city is a challenge I wouldn't advise fairweather fans to take. There's a lot of responsibility in representing a city, especially if your in a rival area like Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan.

Sometimes it can be unsafe to wear a jersey in some places (ex: Cubs jersey to a Sox game when it's not Sox vs Cubs. You are asking to get into a fight which myself and 500 other Sox faithful would gladly accept on any given night at The Cell)

Sometimes it sparks a conversation that you don't want to have (ex: wearing my jersey at the airport, "oh, you a fan of Insert Team Here? Cool, I went to see them... How do they look this season... My son once had.... ") I don't care that you saw the Hawks in the Met in the 80's or that your son had a Frank Thomas signed ball growing up. I'm fine with this chatter at a bar (sometimes) but not okay with it when I'm about to deal with the bullshit of flying)

Sometimes it can create some interesting situations (ex: I wore a rare vintage Hawks jersey out to the bars back home this past holiday, a really cute girl complimented me about it and we started talking sports. She drank the same cider as me (Magner's cider... so good) and eventually kept talking until she casually slipped in the "oh yeah, me and my husband..." Too good to be true, but I digress)

I am prepared to be a walking conversation piece when I throw a jersey on and leave the house. I am used to the compliments/insults/chatter that comes with it, but sometimes, it just gets to be too much.

*-sidenote: Ladies, there seriously isn't anything sexier than a woman wearing a jersey. You increase your chances of getting hit on by 670% by wearing a jersey. It adds +2 to your 1-10 ranking. And wearing your man's jersey to bed might result in the best sex of your life as well. Food for thought.