So… my sister Amelia and I met Torsten Frings yesterday.
Frings was her first ever favourite footballer and so when we were at a Toronto FC match last summer and they announced, on the pitch, that we had just signed Frings we lost our minds a little bit (not sure that many other people at the game knew who he was!). Since then, we’ve half-joked about the possibility of casually running into him on the street, as if this is something that happens in real life. Apparently it is!
We had decided to go to the movies but after a series of other minor (but fateful!) decisions, we ended up at a theatre different from the one we originally were going to go to. As I finished purchasing our tickets at the kiosk outside the theatre and turned to Amelia to hand them to her, I saw a guy who looked fresh out of a 1990s Seattle grunge band and said “Um… is that Torsten Frings?” We confirmed, through scrupulous knowledge of his tattoos and also the fact that he was wearing a hat that said XXII on it, that it was indeed him and when we ended up in line behind him, Amelia tapped him on the shoulder and we congratulated him on his first ever goal for TFC, which he scored only days earlier. He said thank you and then we promptly left him alone because TFC players are relatively anonymous in this city and that anonymity is one of the things Frings likes best about Toronto.
We had to contain our excitement, though, as we had to ride up not one but two escalators behind him and thought it would be poor form to freak out about this chance encounter while still in his presence.
The cherry on top was the fact that he was going to see Brave. In 3D. Occupation: hero.
It was only later that I realised my nails were still painted with Euro-inspired German flags. Thankfully, I don’t think he noticed.
Thankfully? You wanted to show him your nails!