“All In” may have long ago crossed over from a general expression to an overused one but it’s the only way I can explain this spreadsheet.
This is my 15 year old’s spreadsheet. It is NOT for anything to do with school. It has to do with football. It’s a 4 page spreadsheet with all the teams in the top 4 English football leagues (with annotations to the left of teams promoted and relegated) and games he has attended in the 2017/2018 season in green and games he has attended in the 2018/2019 season in blue with tick marks for teams he has seen home or away.
The boy does not have other tracking spreadsheets related to schoolwork. I know this because I not so subtly asked.
He’s seen 22 teams play in 8 different stadiums. He checks games he wants to see with our shared family Google calendar and then buys all his tickets online in advance (for usually a student discounted price of £2), adding them to the calendar. He then finds his way there and back on public transportation. Sometimes he goes with a friend or his brother but a lot of time he goes on his own. It’s one of his London hobbies. He has 4 more stadiums to hit in the London area.
When our friend Nate Frank was recently in town, he appreciated the spreadsheet at first glance. (It took a lot of patient explaining for me to simply understand the names of the 4 divisions.) Nate told Colin he had to read Nick Hornby’s memoir “Fever Pitch” about the author’s similar childhood obsession with football. We bought the book the next day. One however can’t be fully committed to every aspect of an obsession -- so his energy reserve after game attendance is moderate enthusiasm for finishing the book before the end of the 2018/19 season.
Recently Colin showed us his growing collection of game tickets and programs. Noticing that one of the programs was a little roughed up, Brettasked: “What happened here?”
Colin: “Oh yeah. That one accidentally fell in the urinal. But don’t worry. I washed it off in the sink with some soap and then dried it in the hand dryer.”
ALL IN. ALL BOY.