Jocks

I’ve never had much use for jocks.

I can accept athletes, but jocks drive me nuts. Jocks are the ones that people fawn over and adulate regardless of how they behave. The drugs, affairs and occasional murder are to be expected.

Back in high school, the jocks were the center of attention. They attracted girls like a flame attracts moths. The more cavalier they were about their “conquests” the more the girls were attracted to them.

In college, the weekly football or basketball games were so important for generating revenue that the jocks were assured of passing grades. Other students had to actually learn the material, do the course work and actually earn their grades (although actually getting educated does have an advantage later in life.)

After graduation, most of the jocks were shocked to find out that their glory days were over. At the ripe age of twenty-three or so, life as they knew it was over. They weren’t good enough to move into the pros and they finally had to learn in the real world – some more successfully than others.

By the time I was forty, even those select few of my age group who had the talent to play professional sports had used up their bodies, and most of them had to fit in amongst us mere mortals.

At that point, I breathed a sigh of relief.

But like the 17 year cicadas, jocks once again entered my life. The sons and daughters of my generation, now with their own youth behind them, are now coaching Little League baseball, youth soccer, or flag football. My younger kids and my grandkids are the ones they’re coaching. It’s the last hurrah of a former jock.

But the kids playing these sports look up to those adults as role models and follow their example.

The kids learn to scream and cuss, berate one another, focus on what’s wrong with everyone else, expect adulation, and overstate their own abilities. Voila – A new generation of jocks.

And so I still don’t have much use for jocks.