Jaded pharaohs and the sweatpants situation

Saturday 4/6/24

This morning I saw this neat photo of some of the players from the Minnesota Vikings' Purple People Eater-era defense on a field between plays. Their uniforms were covered in mud and grass stains and their breath was visible. Alan Page and Carl Eller--two of my favorite football players of all-time--were in the shot. It was a classic photo from a bygone era. That's what it was and all it needed to be.

Then you read the comments and it's one after another about how this is the way it was when me were men, and football players were stronger, and they didn't wear skirts, and all of that.

It's sad how humans put themselves out to pasture. How they "olden up" themselves with seemingly no self-awareness that they're doing so. Yes, these looked like formidable men, but to say that players were stronger in 1970 than now is just silly.

The game was in Minnesota and obviously it was frigid. Someone made some sardonic comment about the good old days, when you risked fingers and toes to watch a football game in such a locale, and right away someone responded that it was worth it to get frostbite and lose a body part so you didn't have to watch "wussies" like you do now.

Sports often infantilize people, or cause them to self-infantilize. Think how much commonality there is between the kid who brags about his father in the "my dad can beat up your dad" sense, and how people talk about sports, especially older people, and people who make themselves old before their time.

You needn't ever actually be old in the ways that matter most if you are committed to growing each day. I don't mean over time via this kind of happenstance of accreting progress: I mean it's a goal that is consciously worked towards daily. But people do not do that, and many become old very early in life. One may be twenty-seven and old. Sometimes I'll encounter remarks from men in their fifties and they might as well be the ghosts of ancient, disposed, jaded pharaohs.

The time has come to do something about my sweatpants situation. As I was running stairs yesterday I thought that I was colder than I ought to have been at first. It wasn't warm--I believe thirty-four degrees--but I felt oddly aerated, as if I had wind attached to my person.

Well, turns out the hole underneath is now big enough for me to put my head through--big enough that as I was running I looked down and could see the hole underneath me from the front. I also saw this woman passing by trying to suppress a laugh and I realized it was because of my twist on standard workout attire. Good thing my boxers are intact. I must present quite the view when I drop to the ground for my push-ups for those coming up from behind.

Maybe I should take care of this this morning. It would be best not to get arrested at City Hall on a charge of indecent exposure. No, if I get busted for indecent exposure, I want to get my money's worth and go whole hog. That's not a pun. Then again, I feel like my stair workout in the gale-force early morning winds of the nor'easter is even more impressive now.