Category: Platypus people

The introduction of the platypus was such a shock to the British scientific community, in the early 1900’s, that they considered the monotreme an elaborate, well-conceived hoax. They thought they had the animal kingdom all figured out. Those of us who know some platypus people empathize, for when they began to express themselves we thought they were joking. We thought we had human nature all figured out. As we learn more about them, we realize they’re not kidding, and our shock turns to intrigue, as we begin to think they might be able to teach us more about ourselves from their funhouse mirror perspective.

The NFL is Perfect! The NFL is Doomed! 

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Chuck Klosterman and I grew up on football, the Notre Americano, the United States, and NFL version. As such, the two of us are about as far from objective as two people can be on a discussion about football. Chuck Klosterman spends a majority of his book Football celebrating the NFL’s era of almost uncontested dominance, and I smiled and nodded throughout his walk down memory lane. The NFL was and is so dominant that most of us thought their reign would pretty much last forever, but as Football points out, nothing lasts forever.  

We both grew up thinking the NFL was the perfect league running the perfect sport, but I did that comparing it to baseball in the Major Leagues and basketball in the NBA. Klosterman takes his thesis in another direction, comparing it to the other most prominent football league in North America, the Canadian Football League (CFL).

My obsession with the NFL is so myopic that I never even considered the idea that someone might think there is a better professional football league out there. If we were to make the argument that the NFL is perfect though, we would have to use some comparative analysis, and there is only one other league of professional football worth including in such an argument, the CFL. Before we attempt to compare the two, I must confess that I’ve never made it through an entire CFL game. I’ve watched it for the novelty and to watch some of my favorite college football stars who didn’t make it to the NFL. Once the novelty wore off, and I watched those players a couple of times, I flipped the channel. I did not watch enough CFL to establish an informed opinion of the league. Thus, it’s impossible for me to imagine the flip side: a Canadian watching enough NFL to develop an informed opinion on the NFL and walking away with the thought that the CFL game is superior. My myopia on this is the very definition of subjectivity though.

There are BIG reasons that I think the NFL is superior. The iconography the NFL game, its teams, and its players have achieved is not only nationwide, intercontinental, and worldwide. The CFL has never and will never match the NFL in popularity, and I don’t think I need to qualify that statement. What percentage of Parisians are aware of the Cowboys, the Chiefs, or the Jets? That number might be lower than I think, but number would be so much higher than those aware of the Argonauts, the Alouettes, and the Stampeders that it wouldn’t be an interesting survey. How many Londoners know the names Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, and Peyton Manning when compared to Nathan Rourke, Andrew Harris and Justin McInnis? Some could characterize my opinion as subjective, as I watched those elite college athletes mature into NFL stars, but I don’t think it’s subjective to say that the NFL is the go-to place for elite athletes in football. If you argue that point, you’ll have to provide me a ratio of elite college athletes in football who chose to play in the CFL over the NFL, when the NFL wanted them. After that argument is over, you’ll also have to give me a ratio for the number of elite athletes, in their prime, who have left the NFL for the CFL, and when you come up with that insignificant number, I’ll provide the number of CFL stars who have left the CFL for the NFL, when they NFL decided to give them a shot at making an NFL roster. Even if we include suspended NFL players, those in contract disputes, or the attempts aging players have made to revive their career in the CFL, the number of elite athletes who want to play and stay in the NFL for as long as they can is an argument no CFL fan would enter with a straight face.

Even with all that, the primary reason to watch the NFL over the CFL is that to get a first down in football, the NFL provides its teams four downs (chances or tries) and the CFL provides three, and four downs provides more drama.

“Ok,” you, the dispassionate observer might say, “if four is more dramatic than three, wouldn’t five downs be more dramatic?” To paraphrase Klosterman, five downs would probably feel like too many and three feels like it’s not enough. “Four just feels perfect,” Klosterman writes. I agree, because four downs allows for more incremental progressions, or a running game. The CFL’s three-down pass-oriented game almost makes the running game unnecessary and even strategically unwise.

Casual football fans routinely complain that the running game “Is the boring part.” Those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, heard this from our friends in Nebraska who hated the Cornhuskers in college football and loved the Joe Montana-led 49ers.

Those who didn’t grow up in Nebraska have no idea how tough it was to maintain allegiance to the Huskers in the 80s and 90s. We were teenagers and early twenty-somethings during this era, and when you’re in that demographic, you don’t like what everyone else does. My teenage friends, and the kids I wanted to befriend, loathed the Huskers, because their dads, teachers, uncles, and everyone else they knew loved the Huskers. It was deemed “uncool” to like the Huskers. We had a teacher ask the class “Who is a Husker fan?” I was the only one who raised his hand. 

The kids I knew also hated them, even after they won national championships, because running the ball was so boring. I watched the same 49er games they did, and I knew that a twelve-yard pass play was sexier than a twelve-yard running play, but I never made the leap with them to the 49ers. I never considered the running game boring, and I still don’t. 

Their the type who say that if the NFL wants to be more popular, they should do everything they can to create a climate in which NFL teams pass more, if not all the time. As a football fanatic, I disagree that running plays are boring, but if I am going to provide an objective perspective, I must admit that a twelve-yard pass play is sexier than a twelve-yard running play. Also, the NFL’s Competition Committee (NFLCC) has made strides in various rules to try to make the passing game more prominent.

As I wrote, I haven’t watch a CFL game, but I attended an Arena Football League (AFL) game. The AFL passes the ball 70% of the time, and the NFL passes the ball 53.3% of the time. I didn’t know that stat when I attended this game, and I didn’t spot the huge difference for the first couple of quarters. I just considered it a fast paced game that was actually pretty exciting to watch at first. As the game progressed, the game lost some of its sex appeal, and I didn’t know why, because I wasn’t looking for it. Somewhere around the fourth quarter, it dawned on me that exciting, sexy plays lose their definition when they occur an overwhelming percentage of the time. The running game is the ebb to the flow of the passing game. Their relationship is intertwined with one another, as one strategically sets up the other and vice versa. When I attended the AFL game, I was excited to attend an AFL game, and I was bored about 50% of the way through it. There was just too much passing involved. The CFL is a passing game, largely because they only have three downs to secure a first down, and that, in my opinion, is the primary reason it will never be as popular as the NFL.

Klosterman’s book also illustrates the NFL provides the superior game, because the CFL has the rouge. I must confess ignorance here, as I never heard of the CFL’s rouge before reading this section in Klosterman’s Football. The rationale behind the rouge, in my humble opinion, is to give the most boring play in football, the punt, some excitement. The rouge allows for a point to be awarded if a punt, field goal attempt, or kickoff ends up with the ball landing in the touchdown area with no return by the opposing team. The rule discourages teams from simply kneeling or letting the ball fall into the end zone. The CFL believes this promotes excitement, strategy, and field position battles, especially in close games. I must award some theoretical points in this scenario, because I imagine that it might add some small parcel of anticipation amid the otherwise depressing fact that my team is conceding that they cannot secure a first down by punting. Other than that, the rouge just feels like a gimmick that the CFL developed to compete with the NFL, even though it was first implemented over 160 years ago. In my independent research on the rouge, I learned that there have been regular season games decided by a last-second, walk-off rouge, and I also learned that there was a rouge-only game in which Montreal beat Ottawa 1-0. To try to achieve some level of objectivity, I must admit that it’s an interesting quirk, but if my favorite team won a game by a rouge, I can’t imagine it providing so much satisfaction that I would celebrate it. I would categorize it as a win for my team and never talk about the details of it ever again.

Another distinction is that while the NFL only allows eleven players on either side of the line of scrimmage, the CFL has twelve. My initial reaction is that this would lead to a crowded appearance, but the CFL adopted a wider and longer field. If it’s wider, longer, and more populated with players, does that make it better or more popular? The NFL draws more viewers within the nation of Canada than the CFL does.

The only rule I see that favors the CFL is motion toward the line of scrimmage before the snap. The NFL’s Competition Committee states that it provides too much advantage to the offense, and I understand that, but they’ve passed so many rules that favor the offense that I don’t understand why they never passed this one.  I’m sure if I dug deep, I could find other reasons, but this is the only CFL rule I wish the NFL would adopt.

The CFL’s play clock is 20 seconds as opposed to the NFL’s 40 on most plays. This allows for a quicker pace, of course, but again, we go to the drama. Whether the typical fan sees it or not, there’s a lot of pre-snap drama that affects the pace of the game. Watching AFL, CFL, and NFL, you see the drama and the pace that favors the NFL game.

NFL purists still complain about the relatively recent rules the NFL Competition Committee put in place to promote more offense and more passing in the game. The rules committee also inserted rules for player protection, particularly the QB, and most NFL fanatics loathe them, but when comparing them to CFL rules, the NFL still provides the superior product. As I wrote, I’ve never watched a CFL game, but I imagine that watching one would tell me how perfect the allowances and limitations the NFL rules are.

The NFL is Doomed 

“The NFL is doomed!” was author Chuck Klosterman’s pitch to get us to buy his book Football. It worked on me, but I am such a Klosterman fan that I would probably purchase a cook book from him. He writes that the NFL’s implosion will not happen today, tomorrow, or within a couple of years. It will happen decades from now, long after our generation goes down.

The sociopolitical theory Klosterman posits for the NFL’s downfall is that there are so many elements of football that we do not want for our culture. He lists a variety of elements of football that we could label political in nature, and he concludes each element with the sentence, “This is not what we want.” We apparently do not want a violent sport, a sport exclusive to male participants that is only loved in the U.S. He also writes that football does not reject toxic masculinity, celebrates the ability to ignore pain and injury, rewards domination of the weak, shuns individuality and identity, and it is authoritarian and militaristic, and hierarchically controlled, with objective outcomes.

“This is not what we want,” Mr. Klosterman asks after listing each characteristic of football. My question to Mr. Klosterman apes a question my uncle used to ask us when we’d say “we” when talking about sports, politics, or any other element of life for which we developed an affiliation of some sort.

“We really need a touchdown here,” we’d whisper while watching our favorite NFL team on TV, for example.

“Who’s we?” my uncle would ask with a mischievous smile on his face. “What do you have a mouse in your pocket?” That joke wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny when he first said it, and it grew exceedingly less funny the more often he said it. We could classify it as somewhat, sort of clever, in an excessively obnoxious vein, but it was never, ever funny. I think a few of us may have smiled when we first heard him say it, but I don’t think anyone ever laughed. Check that, he laughed. Based on the fact that he said it so often, he obviously considered it one of the most successful rhetorical parries ever created, but if he learned how to read focused groups, he might have discontinued this line of questioning. I don’t think anyone ever thought it was as poignant or provocative as he did either, but his decades-long replies did have one unfunny point, ‘Who do you think you are when you’re dropping your we on us? Who do you claim to represent here?’ 

When I ask who is we, some might guess that I’m accusing Klosterman of political proselytizing, but I’m not necessarily doing so. I’m suggesting that Klosterman is citing group thought when he says ‘we’, but it’s his group’s thought, or the group he knows. Without putting extensive thought into it, I can come up with three ‘we’s of group thought. My we and Klosterman’s we might parallel each other for some distance, but we perpendicular at a certain point. The difference between our similarities and differences are nowhere near the definitions of the ‘we’s that exists within the two sides of my extended family. I realize that’s anecdotal evidence, but that’s kind of the point. If we travel outside my family into the greater variations of we known throughout the country, we find that the country is not only bifurcated on ‘we’s, or trifurcated, it’s absolutely balkanized on so many topics. As one of my friends who was born and raised abroad, and has lived in several states throughout his adult life said, “The United States is almost, almost fifty different countries.” The country is so balkanized on so many subjects Klosterman discusses that I can’t believe he has the confidence, the temerity, and some might say the audacity to write ‘we’ in this manner. Time will bear this out, but Klosterman’s suggestion that his definition of we is more in touch than mine, or the two sides of my family, or those living in this balkanized country just wreaks of subjectivity. 

The much stronger argument Chuck Klosterman should’ve made is that the young ‘uns just aren’t watching football anymore. When I first heard his doomsayer “The NFL is doomed!” marketing pitch for Football, I thought this would be the crux of his argument. And I dreaded reading it, because I didn’t want to read that viewpoint backed or bolstered by analysis, data, and other facts. I read through Football, the book, as I would a horror novel, thinking that that big bad monster was coming, but it never did. If I wrote this book, this argument would be my final death knell, if I thought the end of the NFL was coming. I would approach my analysis from a ‘they’ viewpoint, as opposed to the ‘we’ however. My anecdotal information comes from the young adults around me defining my ‘they’, and the theys I know are very close to entering that key demographic, aged 25-49 that Klosterman admits set trends even though they don’t have any money. When they watch the NFL, or college football, and they don’t very often, they do so with passing interest and little in the way of “we-like” loyalties. They’re in and out of even the most crucial games, and they don’t even bother watching what they consider irrelevant regular season games. When they do watch anything under the football heading, it’s typically a YouTube broadcast that focuses on highlight packages. 

To bolster my point that the NFL is doomed, I would cite a story on a news program that had a 60 Minutes format. It had three separate and distinct stories in the manner that news program does, and one of the stories focused on the Super Bowl of gamers. I considered the story relatively irrelevant, but I asked my twenty something nephew about it, and he lit up. He began talking about the game they played in this Super Bowl of gamers, and he spoke about the individual who led his team to victory in the manner I would Peyton Manning and John Elway. I listened to my nephew’s extensive knowledge and enthusiasm for the game and the individual gamer with a lump in my throat, knowing that my beloved NFL was doomed. 

My nephew also reinforced the idea I had that we’re not only bifurcated or trifurcated, but balkanized, almost as balkanized as we were back in the Theodore Roosevelt administration 1901-1909, when there was no TV, no movies, about 9,000 motor cars in the country, and an overwhelming majority of the American public never traveled thirty miles away from their homes throughout their entire life. Citizens who called Roosevelt president, in their present tense, had print if they could afford books, newspapers, and various other periodicals in common, but that was about it. We had Buggs Bunny, Happy Days, Cheers, Frasier and Seinfeld, and we had the NFL throughout. Some of us say we watched the same shows, because we had three channels, but we had cable. The distinction we know now is that almost every show on cable sucked. We watched major broadcast shows, because they had all of the talented writers and stars, and when we went to work the next day, we talked about those shows with everyone else who watched them. We referred to these conversations as water cooler talk, and the generation that Klosterman and I share can now look back on that era as a very special time. We all shared a cultural zeitgeist, a collective consciousness, a shared cultural literacy, or to put it simply ‘a shared cultural common ground’. However we phrase it, we had those very special connections with a wide swath of the people we talked to for a long time in our lives, and now that it appears over, it almost feels like an hourglass type of timeline that will never be duplicated. The citizens in the Roosevelt administration had little-to-nothing in common in the early 20th century, because they had little in the way of travel or technology, and at the beginning of the 21st century we have little-to-nothing in common because, it could be argued, that we have so much technology that our definitions of entertainment are so fractured or splintered that we’re not reading, watching, or listening to any of the same things anymore. 

This spells doom for the NFL in the sense that it will no longer be the King Kong/Godzilla cultural behemoth of ratings dominance in future generations. When I write that, your next logical question would be, ‘Ok, well, what’s going to replace it?’ Nothing and everything. I know that’s a cop-out answer, but when we talk to those nearing the key demo, we learn that they don’t watch something. They watch everything. ‘Who’s your favorite influencer on YouTube?’ we ask them. They tell us that they don’t really have one. ‘Ok. What’s your favorite type of program, theme, or subject matter that you watch?’ First off, they’ll tell you that they don’t necessarily watch things on YouTube, Netflix, or any other streaming service. They have no loyalties in that regard. They also don’t have a type of program, theme or subject matter. Some of them will come up with something in the face of our disbelief, but if we ask them the same question a month later that will likely change. The final answer we walk away with is they don’t have a focus, and they never really thought about that fact until we asked that question.

Anytime we deal with high-minded questions such as is the NFL doomed, we feel compelled to come up with high-minded answers that lead our loyal readers to the notion that they got their money’s worth. I loved the first half of Football, as I loved the walk down memory lane, but I didn’t really connect with the ‘we’ answers in the second half. I write that, because I remember when the ‘they’s wanted to be a ‘we’ with me. They cared what I thought, wanted to learn from me, and they copied much of what I did, because they used me to define what adulthood meant, and if I might go bold, I think they considered me so cool that they thought it would be cool if I considered them a ‘we’. They tried to watch the shows I watched, they watched the sports I watched, and they even cheered on the NFL teams I cheered on. Those days are over, all of them. They now have their own identities, and their free will. They don’t care what my ‘we’s think, what Chuck Klosterman’s ‘we’s think, or anyone else’s from our generation. They’re going to do what we did and form their own ‘we’. I don’t think their definition of “we” will spell doom for the NFL, but I do think the NFL’s seemingly permanent engraving atop the highest peak of the Mount Olympus of the entertainment world will start to chink, decay and rot away when they take over, as they watch nothing and everything. And if the NFL were to call me and hire me as a consultant on the future that’s what I would tell them they should fear the most. If they then asked me how they could combat that, I would have to confess that I have no idea.

Camping or Vamping?

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“There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm.” –Theodore Roosevelt African Game Trails, 1910  

I came up with a word: boring.

When we say something like that, adventure-seekers and wildlife enthusiasts have two words to describe us: city slickers. That’s not good-natured ribbing either. It’s a harsh condemnation as far as they’re concerned, and we can feel their intent soon after they say it. We could try to defend ourselves, but what’s the point? It’s true. We are city slickers who prefer the creature comforts of city-life and technology, and we know it has probably made us all soft and gooey from the inside and out, but we can’t admit that. We have to pretend we’re strong, rugged individualists who could survive in the wild with nothing but a blade and a canteen, because we feel guilty for living the easy life, and we’re a little jealous of the experiences that hardened these outdoorsmen. Are they true survivalists though? Do they know enough to know what they’re supposed to know, or are they just making it up as they go along? Could they compete with a Theodore Roosevelt in the wild, in the harsh conditions he probably experienced, or are they a hybrid between those who are accustomed to modern conveniences and technology combined with our modern definition of the rustic, rugged life? Are they experienced campers or vampers? 

We all heed the call of the wild, and the need to step away from convenience and comfort to escape civilization and embrace our untamed/wild instincts to let our primal nature hang out for all to see. We know it’s just good for the soul to have experiences that teach us more about ourselves. “You’ll never know who you are, who you truly are, until you’re backed into a corner.” And that sounds so romantic that if we brought it up in front of a group, almost all hands would go flying up from those who want to join us on our planned expedition. Some hands will even turn into fists, as they shout, “Yeah, gimme some a that!” But the minute we start darkening spots on a calendar, those hands, smiles, and eyebrows all go down. “Something tells me I’m going to be busy.” 

The concepts behind achieving a true Theodore Roosevelt spirit, seeking adventure and meaning in nature is such a romantic notion that city-slickers can’t but help but want some of that for themselves for at least one weekend, but we always fail. “It doesn’t matter that you fail, because everyone fails at something or another in life. It’s what you do after failure that defines you.” We love that, all of it, but if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, our failure to become this generation’s Theodore Roosevelt will never bother us so much that we’re going to do whatever it takes to make it happen. 

Da Mudder Humper

We know mudder nature offers great solitude and beauty to the unsuspecting and suspecting, but how long how long we’re supposed to stand at the bottom of a mountain before it happens? How long does one quietly stand at the bottom of a mountain before we make a connection to its height and vastness—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually? I’ve tried to experience it, but someone always interrupts me with, “Ok, are you ready?”  

“No, I’m not ready.” I say with indignation. “Hold on for a second.” This interrupter wanted to checkout prematurely, or what we considered a premature checkout, and we weren’t even halfway done, because we thought were close. “We drove all this way to see this mudder humper. Why don’t you go ahead and give me a second to appreciate her.” And we said that with solid conviction, but we didn’t really know how long we needed to convince them, or ourselves, that the very large mound of dirt and rocks inspired feelings of grandeur and timelessness within us to the point that we made that connection.

We don’t want to be a modern who looks at a mountain of breath-taking glory for twenty-two seconds and checks out and moved on. We want to feel, just for a moment, what our forebears must have experienced when they looked upon this mountain. We all think that the man of yesteryear was more in touch with nature than we are, because we’ve been too modernized. There is truth to that, of course, but did they appreciate the wonder of natural landmarks as much or more than we did? My guess is they didn’t view a mountain range as a breathtaking wonder in the manner we do, but as a pain in the ass that they were either going to cross or navigate around on foot or by horse-drawn carriage. 

***

Spotting nature’s finest critters in their environment, doing what they do, can also be awe-inspiring, but how often do we actually see them in the wild? “The one thing we know about nature with absolute certainty is that it’s unpredictable and unreliable,” a tour guide informed us when we didn’t see a single creature on our tour. If we’re lucky enough to actually see a wild animal in their environs, doing what they do, how many of those moments are inspiring or exciting. Most creatures of wild seem to spend about 75% of their time sleeping, 10% hiding from predators, and the rest of their time actively searching for food, eating that food, and sitting on their can doing nothing. If you’re lucky enough to see them during the percentage of the 15% of their time actively searching then you’re one of the lucky few. I’ve never been that lucky. 

When we see these incredible beasts in a zoo, we immediately think about how awful it is that they have to spend their existence in a caged environment, but if you’ve ever actually seen one of them in the wild, you know caged animals really aren’t missing that much. The wild ones live lives a lot more boring than most of us know. Their whole lives are about eating whatever they can find, sleeping about 15-20 hours a day, and occasionally finding someone to procreate with to extend the species. The caged animal not only sleeps the same amount of time, but they get free, non-taxing delivery of food, and they also have procreation partners delivered to them. The two things zoo patrons might characterize as the primary deprivations of the wild animal is mental engagement and physical exercise, which I think most wild animals would characterize as overrated. Our tour guide basically bolstered my characterizations when she informed us that one of the only ways they can get the wild animals out of their homes is by providing them salt licks, and they conveniently put them in areas where tourists can spot them. Yet, this only increases the chance that an animal will leave their home. It guarantees nothing. 

As a person who is more accustomed to seeing wild animals in action, it’s disappointing to see them do nothing but pant in bask of a sunrise. It’s a pretty decent picture, don’t get me wrong, but at some point you wouldn’t mind seeing what happens after a park ranger sets a mechanical rabbit loose, like they do at the dog tracks to set them in motion. If we got lucky enough to see them hunt or a fight LIVE! and IN ACTION!, and we see them ripping each other apart, we probably wouldn’t want to stick around long enough to see the unsanitary ways they rip entrails out of the loser’s anatomy. We prefer the packages our nature shows put together with their motion-sensitive cameras in the wild, and most of us can’t even last a full show, so we go to YouTube to watch the highlight reels. “It’s not the same,” the nature enthusiast will counter.

“It’s not,” we admit, “but I’ve spent some time in the wild, and I’ve seen these creatures in their habitat, doing what they do, and they’re so boring for such long stretches of time that my embarrassing reflex is to reach for the remote.”  

*** 

I don’t know if I loved camping in the outdoors (on a protected reserve) when I was a kid, or if I just remember my own highlight package, but I had a love/hate relationship with the wild. Back then, I feared, hated, and loved her dark, wooded regions. The creatures I imagined therein were not all earthly either. I had a vivid imagination, and I imagined that everything outside the campfire light was mysterious, had hidden spirits, and its own relative charm. Now that my imagination has lost some of its vividness, I know I likely would’ve found nothing if I dared venture beyond the campfire light into those dark, foreboding regions. And if I ever had the misfortune of running into one of the most fearsome beasts imaginable in that darkness, my guess is that they’d probably be more scared of me than I am of them, or asleep. I would never tell younger me any of that though, because I know those fears added to the charm of those camping trips, and I still feel that every time I smell burning wood.

When we get older, but not so old that we lose our imagination, we try to recapture the magical charm camping once held for us. The problem is that our parents handled most of the particulars of camping when we were very young, so we needed to find a friend who was a more experienced camper. We searched for that fella or female who knew how to help us, and when we finally found him, we found that the biggest difference between an experienced camper and an inexperienced one is mostly about the tent. Our experienced camper put up quite a few tents in his day, but he wouldn’t put our tent up for us. He didn’t want to deprive us of the sacred rite of passage involved in putting up a first tent, which was the whole reason we invited him to our camping expedition. When we were done, he laughed at us, and he pulled the stakes out another half-inch. “That’s it,” we asked ourselves. “That’s the difference between an experienced camper and an inexperienced one?”

No, that’s not it, he brought a flashlight. “You forgot a flashlight?” he asked with disgust. “You, my friends, are inexperienced campers,” he said. We felt insecure about our lack of knowledge, and we felt some shame for being so unprepared. Feelings of shame are usually followed by some form of rebellion, and we felt that bubbling to the surface, but our experienced camper was not very attractive, he was out of shape, and he was a subpar employee in our company who didn’t have many friends, so we let him wallow in his camping superiorities.

Once we managed to get past the tent and supplies portion of the camping routine, we all decided to go fish. Our experienced camper was also an experienced fisherman, and he did not appreciate us doing the only thing inexperienced fisherman love about fishing: casting. We were casting for distance, and we were casting to break up the boredom of fishing. We also reasoned that because the lake was full of moss and weedy, frequent casting kept it more debris-free. Plus, we didn’t want the fish nibbling our nightcrawler off the line. “What are you doing?” he whispered at us in disgust. “You should be recasting 5-7 minutes apart at the very least.” When we asked him why, our question was a respectful one that ceded to his authority. He explained his rationale, and it was a rather generic answer that involved the frequency of the recast depending on the bait type, water conditions, and target species. When we attempted to explore with more specifics, he tried to answer, but his answers didn’t satisfy us, so we kept asking. “Stop talking,” he spat in whisper, “you’re scaring the fish away.” We respectfully waited beyond reason to speak again, and when we did, he repeated: “Stop talking, you’re scaring the fish away.” We tried to display respect, through more silence, but when we got too bored and tried whispering things to him, he moved to the other side of the lake. Our takeaway was that while camping is boring, but fishing is mind-numbing.

When we extinguished our campfire at the end of the night, our experienced camper brought out an inflatable mattress, which we considered a cardinal sin of the camping world, until he followed that with a Flextailgear Max Pump Three that promised to “inflate the standard inflatable mattress in under two minutes with a 5,000 Pascal pressure rating and a built-in camping light.” We read that off the box to our experienced camper and asked him what his patron saint of outdoorsiness, Theodore Roosevelt, would think of an inflatable mattress with a Flextailgear Max Pump Three. 

“I don’t care,” he said. “There’s no way I’m sleeping on that cold hard ground.”

It’s not for me, but I respect anyone and everyone who tries to “ruff it” in the wild, but what does “ruffing it” mean? It’s relative to the person of course, but we all know that minor level of sensory deprivation nature provides can yield a certain sense of peacefulness, as we attempt to connect with nature and ourselves. It’s a momentary escape from the distractions we so enjoy. Once we’re done with that relatively quiet walk through a trail in a wooded region, we ask ourselves what’s the difference between a true outdoorsman, an adventure seeker, an experienced camper, and someone who never travels outside the city? Our guide, teacher, experienced camper or vamper, knew his stuff, but how much stuff is there to know when we go out camping? He improved the taughtness of our tent by moving it about a half-inch, he remembered a flashlight, and he knew enough not to talk while fishing, but he also brought modern conveniences that would’ve made the experienced outdoorsman of yesteryear groan. He didn’t help us renew our appreciation of anything, unless we’re talking about our renewed appreciation for the controlled climate an HVAC can provide, the appliances that provide convenience and comfort, and our devices. When we’re nestled back in our comfortable homes, we appreciate not being smashed into by bugs, as when they see a campfire light, they think it’s a moon, they fly kamikaze-style into it. The june bugs, in particular, don’t seem to care that something as big as a human face stands between them and the light. When we’re in the comfy confines of our home, we also know that nothing is going to stick its disgusting, grimy little proboscis in us to suck blood out of our system. More than anything else, our camping trip gave us a renewed appreciation of our sense of home. Theodore Roosevelt would not have approved of any of this, but the only word we could find to describe “hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm” was boring, and hot and sticky, oh! and the two words ‘never again,’ sorry, Teddy.

The Quiet Quirky Clues to Our Core

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A baby, in the arms of her father, watched a line of adults proceed by her in church. She watched them proceed past with little interest. She watched them as I watched her, both of us looking at nothing until something caught our eye. Something caught her eye. She went from absently looking at people to intense focus. I turned to see what caught her attention. It was another daughter being held by her father in a different manner. The watcher and the watchee locked eyes for a couple seconds, and the moment passed, or so I thought. The watcher then wriggled herself into another position. “What are you doing?” her father whispered, looking down at her movements and adjusting his arms according to her wishes. When she was done finagling her fathers’ arms to her wishes, she ended up in the exact same position as the watchee in her father’s arms. I found her exposé into the human condition fascinating, because it suggested that keeping up with the jonses is just plain human nature, as opposed to learned behavior.

What does it mean? Does her mimicry reveal our innate need to achieve conformity, or the thought that we, even when very young, believe everyone else is doing it better?

***

Ever shake hands with a young kid, say seven-to-nine-years-old? They put their hand out vertical, but they add no grip, and their completion of the ritual is almost robotic. Adults apply meaning to this superficial, symbolic ritual. Kids just do what they’re told, the way we did when we were kids. They don’t know any better, we do. Yet, if we know better, what do we know? We think we gain special insight into a man by the way he shakes another man’s hand, but what do we gain? How hard is it to fake a great handshake?

“I never respected a man who didn’t shake a man’s hand,” my father-in-law said. “If a fella gives you a firm, but-not-too-firm handshake, and he looks you in the eye while he’s doing it, you know he’s a man’s man, and a man you can trust” 

“Fair enough,” I said, “but can it be faked?” It was a leading question, but I was also so curious about this staple of the insightful man’s definition of a man he thought he could trust on sight. 

“You can feel it,” he said.

That seemed preposterous to me, but he had a closing tone that suggested further interrogation on my part would be viewed as disrespectful. It was not my intention to be disrespectful, as I knew this man knew ten times more about reading people than I’ll ever know. He spent a forty-year career learning the difference between honest people and deceitful ones, and he was, by all accounts, very good at his job. 

I didn’t think my other questions were disrespectful, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they were leading questions that asked him if he knew how wrong he was. So, I just shut it.

If I continued down this path, I would’ve told him about the weasel I met who knew how to shake a man’s hand, and he was so good at it that I thought, ‘Now that’s a handshake.’ I never put much stock in handshake readings, but this man had such a great handshake that it influenced my first impression. The weasel then spent the next twenty minutes trying to find creative ways to get me to part with my money. Piece of junk is what he was, but he had a nice, firm handshake, and he looked me in the eyes while he did it. I’ll give him that.

What does it mean? We think it’s a little cute that a young one doesn’t understand the complexities involved in the hand shake, and we dismiss the child’s failure to provide any data to our information-gathering exercise. As we age, we learn that a proper handshake conveys trust and respect, but some of us learn how to fake this customary ritual to mislead people. Relying on the knowledge we’ve attained from the meaning behind a great handshake is flawed. I’d much rather talk to them, watch them, and read them to learn the refrain in their brain.

***

“I wish I had all the money and love that guy had,” a young feller said referring to an NBA player who happened to be the son of a former NBA player. To paraphrase the Tina Turner song, What’s [Money] Got to do With It? Money can buy us all sorts of things, but there comes a point when the power of money ends.

At some point, money becomes an afterthought. Once we have enough money to support us for the rest of our lives, it’s “one less thing to worry about,” as the Forrest Gump character said. Name recognition is another powerful tool, as it can open doors for us, but once we’re in, we’re in. What do we do then? If we don’t have game, at some point, no one cares what our name is. Money can’t buy respect from our peers in school, at the workplace, or on the court. That’s where names are made and lost. When we fail, money won’t help people forget. Love and an excellent support system are the coin of the realm there. When I failed in school, the workplace, and in athletics, I would’ve loved it if someone said, “You’re going to fail, it’s what we do, it’s what we do the moment after we fail that defines us.” I would’ve also loved it if they added, “And when you fail, just know that you have me, the person who cares more about what happens to you than anyone else in the world, standing right behind you.”

What does it mean? We all know those cynical types who think that in one way or another, money solves everything. My guess is this is said most often by cynical types who never had any, because it is an excellent excuse to explain to ourselves why they haven’t measured up. We could list all of the players in our culture who never had a dime growing up, but that would be redundant. We all know that money does not help us deal with momentary failures, but we have to admit that if we didn’t have what we believed to be a quality excuse those temporary failures could crush us. If quality excuses help us get over speed bumps, what do we do then? Most of the successful people, I’ve met tell me stories of their no-money, no friends in high places rise, and I’ve heard a number of tales that detail trials and errors, and rock bottom, insomnia-rich, where-do-I-go-from-here failures that eventually lead to success. “How?” will be your first question, and your second question will be an unspoken, “What’s the difference between you and me?” Where did their inner drive come from? Their answers will usually be a frustrating amount of nothing really, except that they had an unwavering spirit behind them, often a parent, who provided support, guidance, love, and a whole bunch of other elements that taught them that momentary failure is nothing more than a learning experience.

***

I hear parents rewrite their past all the time at their kid’s baseball games. Mythologizing ourselves into an ideal image is just kind of what we do when we’re watching our kids play ball. This “They’re not as good as we were,” mentality helps us control the narrative of our lives by highlighting our character-defining moments to attempt to rewrite our character. Yet, when we’re telling our kids about the seminal, pivotal memories of our lives, how often do we “misremember” key details that never made it into our highlight reels? When we see our kids act in a somewhat less than aggressive manner, we’re despondent. “That’s not how I did it!” we say. Is that true? It is, because it’s how we remember it. It’s possible that we remember it correctly, but it’s more probable that we remember our highlight reels as opposed to our reality. It’s also possible that we’ve rewritten our past so thoroughly that that is genuinely how we remember it. I do this, you do it, we all do it. Our grandparents probably did it to our parents, our parents do it to us, and we do it to our kids. It’s so common that we could probably call this chain of rewrites human nature at this point. 

What does it mean? Our rewrites are an attempt to correct the past that we think might help us correct our present and future. They’re not lies, however, as we genuinely believe them after reviewing our highlight reels. Yet, the best rewrite we could possibly write is the one in which we try to escape the clutches of this chain. It could alter our kids future if we rewrote the mistakes our parents made with us. We may not want to recount our failures for them, but we could talk about how we dealt with adversity, moments of embarrassment, and humiliation. We could offer them a love and support rewrite that includes our own version of the “And when you fail…” note of support listed earlier that we wish our parents offered us?    

***

Alan “the neighbor” offered Ben “the neighborhood teenager” some advice on his game. The Ben, in our scenario, forgot everything Alan said two seconds after he’s said it, which made Ben the perfect repository for Alan’s otherworldliness worldliness. I wanted to tell Alan to “Save it” about halfway through his spiel, because other, more prominent types in Ben’s life offered him similar advice, and he didn’t listen to them either. Ben was all about achieving independence, or at least a level that made him immune to responding to advice. I didn’t say anything, because I knew this really wasn’t about Alan helping Ben improve his game. Allen just wanted to display his unique understanding of the human condition to us.

What does it mean? We all offer one another advice, and we all politely avoid listening to those who are kind enough to offer us some advice. Not only do I know people who act this way, I know I am one of them. There are a variety of reasons and excuses for why we don’t listen to anyone, but my advice to people who give advice is, “Save it! No one’s listening.” That’s dumb advice I know, because when we spot a flaw in someone’s game, or in someone’s life, some of us sincerely want to help them, and we can’t avoid trying to prove the knowledge we’ve attained along the way. The problem with us hearing such advice is that most of us believe doing the same thing over and over will eventually produce different results.  

***

We all try to help one another when we spot flaws, but you ever tried to get a senior citizen’s mind right on a passion project of yours? When I watch it happen a big, neon-flashing “SAVE IT!” crosses my mind. You have an opinion, we have an opinion, and the only thing that keeps some of us going is the belief that their opinion is uninformed, because it goes against our sources. Before we go about getting their mind right however, we might want to consider the demographic of our audience. Marketers have what they call a key demo, and they pay big bucks for ad space in a show that appeals to audiences between the ages of 18-49, because their intense market research suggests that they’re still susceptible to suggestion.

When we’re under 18, we’re even more susceptible to suggestion, but we don’t have any money. The 49+ demo have all the money, but advertisers don’t waste the corporation’s time or money trying to persuade them, because through market research they’ve learned that the 49+ mind is already made up. I’ve met the anecdotals, my aunt was an anecdotal. She thought adhering to the prevailing winds of change gave her a more open-minded presentation, and she hoped it made her appear fresh, hip, and younger. It didn’t, but she got a lot of mileage out of being anecdotal. Generally speaking, the +49ers stubbornly adhere to the patterns they’ve developed, and all the routines and rituals they’ve had for a majority of their lives.

What does it mean? Market research dictates that most of the 49+ demo is so loyal to the products they’ve consumed for years that they’re branded. So, go ahead and tell them your opinions, because that’s your right, but just know that you’re probably wasting your breath if you think you’re going to get their minds right on your pet topic, because they’ve aged out of anyone ever changing their mind on anything. If you disagree, go ahead and ask someone who spends millions trying to tap into the culture and reach the widest audience possible. The marketing agencies, and various marketing departments of corporations have decided that pouring millions into advertising to +49ers is equivalent to pouring money down the drain.

Once you’ve arrived at your conclusion, you might want to join me in my quest to get marketing teams to stop directing a portion of their advertising budgets to streaming services. If that fails, we should focus on getting them to offer a +49 opt out on button on commercials for those who’ve aged out of the key demo, because their beloved fast-forward thumbs are developing callouses.