Our Role Models

Our Role Models

Hoooooooooooley crap! I never laughed so hard in a long time. Celebrity golf; that’s what it was. It was hilarious! Oh the charity is most commendable. These folks raise a truckload of money for the charity they represent, and to tell you the truth, they play a mean game of golf. They could teach the pros a thing or two about putting, that’s for sure.

Well that’s not what struck my funny bone. What it was was the whole field of athletes – hockey players, baseball and basketball players and so on. Holy crap! These guys are giants, both in their sport and in their bodies. I was mesmerized watching them propelling their portly potbellies around the field, thinking; how could they possibly be the athletes they’re supposed to be, lookin’ like that? It was like a gathering of ancient Sumo wrestlers with their pants on wobbling around the fairways.

It’s not nice to make fun of people’s appearances and certainly it’s with no sense of derision that my merriment takes over. But watching people like Charles Barkley finessing a putt is funny! All I could think of was him making a jump shot in basketball – all four hundred –odd pounds of him and crashing right through the floor on the landing. Well come on – that is funny.

The thing is that all these people are young enough to be my children. How is it possible that I see nothing but a bunch of old geysers out there? There’s not an Adonis in the crowd. What a paradox!

I guess that’s the lesson to be learned here. We are so accustomed to the media’s version of what a role model should look like; we don’t recognize the real ones when we see them. That’s a shock. Do we suddenly have to rely on the media to give us the specifications for a role model? That’s really what’s at the root of a lot of our problems. We paint a picture of what our heroes are supposed to look like and if they don’t, we can’t recognize them. What a stupid trap to fall in to!

As I said, these old geysers clomping around on the fairways are pretty well all young enough to be my children, yet they seem to me to be older than I am. Maybe it’s because I don’t really follow sports that much that I don’t recognize their achievements. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but I don’t think so. I say shame on me for being lured into the unreal world of the photographers, the writers and the editors of media. And shame on them for leading us by the nose down the road of non-existence! Well, they’re getting their just desserts. Newspapers and magazines are dropping like flies and even television is becoming irrelevant. Maybe if we become more critical of the garbage on the Internet, we may be able to make better judgments. At leas that’s the way it seems from up here on the top shelf.

I’m just sayin’.