Although I'm not a fan of threads based on, "Dude, I totally owned this Gator fan last night at A.J.s! He finally admitted that UF never went wire-to-wire..Pwned!", I wanted to share a little Seminole tale from far away.

I'm currently working in The Netherlands, and I picked up some colleagues from the Groningen train station yesterday. Groningen is a wonderful Dutch city about 2 hours from Amsterdam, and sometimes referred to as "Mini-Amsterdam". It boasts a wonderful blend of modern and historic architecture and is swarming with lovely young college women (whom all ride bicycles). Anywhoo.....as I frequently pick up and drop off colleagues at this station, I've developed a knack for picking out Americans. They're very few and very, very far between.

As I was speaking with the 2 luggage-toting gentlemen in my party, a dude about 21 years old wearing a "Zune" shirt walks past and sees my FSU hooded sweatshirt. It's this one, but in black.

He very excitedly says, "Hey, you're Americans!", then proceeds to engage us in banal, geographical dialogue such as "Where you from? San Antonio? NO WAY! My step mom is from Dallas" (Insane coincidence! Only 300 miles away! I have nothing else in common!!) So he brings his unoriginal dialogue back to me and asks where I'm from. I prominently point back to the logo on my sweatshirt (again) and tell him Tallahassee. He says, "Oh, yeah. Right". Then becomes very animated and steps back for some unprovoked trash talking. His arms are outstretched and fingers waving and pointing down. Imagine Jamie Kennedy or Michael Rappaport acting "gangsta" and smack talking. He amalgamates Bowden and Jimbo and shouts, "BOBBY FISHER SUUUCKS!" I'm obviously thinking of Bobby Fischer, and so is my colleague, an avid chess player back in the day. (He later taught me about the Sicilian Open strategy) Laugher ensues.

I say, "The Chess player? Are you a huge Kasparov fan or something? You must mean 'Bobby Bowden'". This is doubly funny because I'm not going to defend Bobby Bowden's coaching ability at this point of his career anyways. I then inquire as to his allegiances, and he rattles off the state of Washington. He's not repping any particular team, college or professional, and the terrible conversation is mercifully extinguished. Groningen has several "Coffee Shops", and I assume he was just returning from breakfast.

I've donned FSU apparel in front of thousands upon thousands of random people in Germany and Holland over the past 2 years, and this is my first time being recognized. Boo.