Books, Covers and Hot Tennis Players

As one of the few people in Australia who have never ever played a sport in their life (it’s true, just ask my sister in law who is currently under the delusion that I am going to join her mixed touch football team…..HA!), I had no idea that Wimbledon was even on, let alone that an Aussie was playing the other night. And not just that...playing the world #1! I don’t feel overly guilty, as my husband hadn’t even mentioned it, which I assume means that the majority of the Australian population didn’t think it was worth watching as it was most than likely a foregone conclusion. I had never even heard of Nick Kyrgios, which I know, means little when you are as sports illiterate as I am. But I get the impression that most Aussies had written this poor (and might I add, extremely good looking ;) young lad off as Wimbledon road kill, and it made me ponder the whole concept of “judging a book by it’s cover,”or in this case it’s world tennis ranking.


As a young mum (We were 21 year old uni students when we had our gorgeous but complete surprise package little girl), I have experienced first hand this cliche in full swing. So sit back, with your cup of tea (or wine…...it is only 1pm, but whatever floats your boat), and I will tell you the highly entertaining and disgustingly judgemental story!


As I said, hubby (then boyfriend) and I were 21 and at university when our life took an unexpected, yet as it turns out completely meant to be, left turn and we went from party hard, campus dwelling uni kids to two grown ups with a bub. Anyway, that is a whole blog article in itself and as its a huge part of what has made me the woman I am, I’m sure it will come up again regularly in my posts. What I am leading to is that when Miss11 was about 6 months old I was going through the checkout at Big W, when the middle aged checkout chick leans over to me and says, (and I kid you not) “You should take your sister back to your mum or people might think that you are one of those young mums.” I wish, with everything inside me, that I had been confident enough, witty enough and self assured enough to come back with some highly intelligent, yet equally insulting come back. But I wasn’t and I smiled politely as if I completely agreed with what she had said and went on my way. The anger that seethed inside me was beyond words, although hubby would argue that I found very strong words when relaying the incident to him! In this woman’s mind I had been too well dressed (in my polo shirt…...I did mention I was a Canberra uni student, didn’t I?) to actually be a young mum. I know she wasn’t thinking badly of me but the fact that she believed so strongly in this negative stereotype made me so angry.  I hated the fact that, according to her I couldn’t possibly be a young mum because I didn’t fit her narrow minded, boxed in view of what a young mum was.

Looking back now, I am more understanding. We all do it. We constantly judge people by what they look like. We make ill informed assumptions about people we don’t even know. And in Nick Kyrgios’ case, write him off because we have already judged him. Its never going to happen. None of us are ever going to be able to completely eradicate that human nature to categorise and judge people, both negatively and positively. But perhaps if we are all that bit more aware...well who knows! So good on you Hot Nick for teaching us all that not only should we not judge books by their covers, but also that horribly permed, over made up middle aged check-out chicks should keep their uneducated, ill informed opinions to themselves.