My Daddy can Beat up Your Daddy – The New Olympic Games
My Dad is a big man and has been as long as I’ve known him.
He’s not NFL offensive line big or anything like that and he’s only 6’1”. But he’s one of those guys who seems even bigger than he is. When I was young he was, of course, the strongest man in the entire world. I remember that I couldn’t even lift my “Green Machine” pedal car and yet he could pick it up and carry it up stairs with only one hand. In his younger years he had been a real-life, actual lumber jack working in the woods in northern California and the tales of his strength and ferocity from these years were the thing of myth for me and my brothers growing up. We heard stories of car doors ripped off their hinges, forks being stabbed through people’s hands that dared to play at stealing my Dad’s dessert and on and on.
In truth, my Dad is not a violent man at all. To my knowledge he has never been in a fist fight since I’ve been alive and I don’t recall hearing any stories from his younger days of actual fights. But that was beside the point. When I was on the play ground and we started talking about our Dads and who could beat up who, that was a debate I always waded into with supreme confidence. And, most of the time, for the kids who knew my Dad, there wasn’t much debate. So, why am I telling you all this?
Because there is something deep in all of us that makes that kind of thing matter, not just when we’re young, but today as well.
Or if not all of us, at least the men. Maybe the same is true for women, but with an ever mounting pile of evidence to prove it, it is becoming a well known fact that I know next to nothing about women, so I won’t presume to say whether this applies to women or not.
But for men, part of our nature is the desire to prove ourselves superior in some way, whether it be the strongest, fastest, smartest, toughest, best smile, (ok, maybe not best smile), whatever. When I was young, it was a great source of personal pride that my Dad was big and strong and smart. It wasn’t just about my Dad, it was about me proving myself as well. You see the point of that whole debate is not about Dads, so much as it is about us. We want to be the best to be the son of the best, etc. The thing is this inner desire has been pushed down and buried and mutated in most people. We have this desire to excel and prove ourselves the best, but have fewer and fewer proving grounds.
So we obsess about competitive arenas over which we have no control like pro and college sports. And then we take it to another level and try to pretend we do have control with fantasy sports, sports gambling, referring to your favorite team as “we” (strongly encouraged) and yelling at the TV (which works sometimes for me on field goal attempts and free throws I swear. It’s true, shut up).
But what about the things we do every day? Maybe you get a raise or a promotion at work. Maybe you get a compliment about how well behaved your child is, but does that really prove anything? Does it let you know you are good at something, much less the best?
After countless hours of research (you can’t count what’s not there), I have discovered that the Olympic Games were born out of this inner desire to compete and prove oneself. When they first began, the events were often things that were done as a part of regular life. How far you could throw and spear mattered because throwing a spear might very well be required of you defending yourself from Spartan invaders or in killing something good to eat. How fast you could run mattered because people had to walk and run much more frequently, especially if their aim with a spear wasn’t so good.
Over time though, those events got locked in even though they stopped resembling anything that anyone does in real life. So we continue to have the same events year after year no matter how much changes. When was the last time, for example, you thought to your self “I really need to get a message to Joe. I better get running so I can get to his place by nightfall and tell him.” Or, “I wonder if that boar is in spear range?” I’m guessing if you are like me, it has been days since you had either of those thoughts.
So, to keep Dads from having to brawl, to keep us from going even more over the edge with our sports obsession, and in hopes that we will not become so desperate for a competitive outlet that we will do things like watch cars drive 500 laps around an oval and call it a sport, I have devised a solution that I’m unveiling here and now:
The “Modern Modern Olympic Games For Things That Really Matter.”
The title probably still needs some work, but we won’t let that stop us. Here is what I propose. What we need in society is a competitive outlet that allows us to compete at the things we do every day to decide once and for all who is the best. We need to completely remake the Olympics and replace all those out of date irrelevant events with things that really matter in life. I have started my own list of events here and encourage you to suggest some additions. Then I will contact the most powerful man in the Olympic movement (Bob Costas) and get this done.
Here are my events:
1. Negotiating the purchase of a car. People go head to head with one as the seller and one as the buyer. Each competitor secretly submits under seal the price he wants to get or the price he wants to pay respectively. The one who gets closest to the price wins. Bonus points for bringing a mechanic with you to examine the car, kicking the tires during the inspection, looking under the hood (actual knowledge of how a car engine works is not necessary and frankly is discouraged), using the phrase “what will it take to get you in this car today?” You can expect to see tried and true strategies like “the walk out”, the “threatened walk out”, the “I saw this same car in autotrader for $500 less”, misquoting the Kelly Bluebook value, the “I’ve got another buyer coming after dinner, so I can’t promise it’ll still be here” and much, much more. Tell me you aren’t already excited
2. Potty Break: Taking a child who is being potty trained to the bathroom at the mall food court right after you’ve gotten your food.
Imagine the voice of Bob Costas comes on your TV and says,
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a thriller prepared for you today. In the urban mom division we have Madison and her son Jack against Madeline and her son Jack competing here in the beautifully restored Riverside Mall. As you all know by now, the object of this event is to get your food, find a table and finish the meal. However, as soon as the mothers get their meals, their 30 month old children, both of whom have just started potty training, will demand to go to the bathroom right now. The Mom may choose to disregard the demand, but wet pants will mean immediate disqualification and any delay in the potty training process as determined by a team of overly involved grandmothers, could lead to a 2 year ban from competition.
Further, the Riverside Mall’s crack cleaning team is always on the prowl to clear away food sitting on an empty table, so the Mom’s have to work fast.
As the competition begins, Madison has just chosen a giant slice of cheese pizza from Sbarro while Madeline has opted for Hot Dog on a Stick in hopes that overpaying for a corndog and lemonade will be offset by the potential that Jack is so distracted by the ridiculous outfits that he forgets he has to go potty. Fat chance. We’ve been feeding these kids Capri Suns for the last hour and a half.
And just like that, we have simultaneous demands with both children demanding a potty break before either mom has even found a table. Madeline looks around desperately pushing a stroller with one hand while balancing her food tray with the other while throngs of patrons mill around her aimlessly as if she were invisible. This is heart pounding action folks.
Meanwhile Madison is moving in on an empty table. Oh wait, what’s this? Two business men on their lunch break were waiting on that table and are moving in at the same time. Madison gives them the “young mother’s glare of death” that has made her famous in these competitions back in her home town of Turlock, California. The men wisely recoil in fear as one man actually loses balance and spills his 44 ounce diet soda all over his tie. Oh, you hate to see that, but Madison is un-phased and immediately sits down at the table.
Meanwhile Madeline has given up on finding a table and has decided to just bring her tray of food into the bathroom with her. This is a bold and frankly really yucky move by Madeline. Madeline waits at the open door of the restroom even though there is mysteriously no line. Years of always encountering a line in public restrooms has made her hesitate at the door. This could prove a costly error in such a close competition. She finally proceeds and finds…OH NO…there is no counter surface large enough to set the tray down!!! Madeline looks around in momentary panic, but she is no rookie and quickly jumps in front of a woman in a wheel chair to snag the handicapped stall which also features a fold down changing table which she deftly uses to hold her tray.
Getting seated at a table delayed Madison, but she is to the bathroom now with Jack. Not having the food with her allows her to move quickly to an open stall where she moves in and takes Jack’s pants off. Everything seems to be going smoothly, ….but wait, what’s happening now? Jack is refusing to sit down on the potty “because that’s not the way Daddy does it.” Madison is arguing in vain as she desperately does not want Jack to get in the habit of peeing from a standing position at this tender age. After all, she has new carpet back home to worry about. Jack is standing his ground and now Madison is holding him up over the toilet and she has things going again.
Madeline has finished up with Jack and is putting him back in the stroller. Now Madison is finished as well and she is carrying Jack back to the table and has the lead with Madeline trying to push the stroller and balance the tray.
Hold on! Madeline’s Jack has just made a derogatory comment about a man’s enormous belly and the man heard him.
Madeline is trying to keep her focus as her face turns bright red and Jack is screaming for his “yunch” and now she’s losing it, a pack of teenage girls are headed right toward her to get to the bathroom.
The drink cup is sliding on the tray…
She’s losing balance and…
Oh, no, the drink has spilled and the tray has been dropped, Jack is crying. Just a disaster for Madeline. Her only hope now is that Madison’s food has been cleared away by the cleaning staff while she left it unattended.
As we go back to the food court now and find Madison she is headed toward her table and “THE FOOD IS STILL THERE!! AN AMAZING VICTORY FOR Madison appears to be in hand. Looking closer we discover that Madison wisely left her stroller by her table and pulled over a hichair to send a signal to the cleaning staff that she would be returning. That’s the kind of quick thinking that has earned Madison 2 Olympic medals in this event when she competed with her other sons Riley and Jack. Yes, she has two sons named Jack, but as she explained, “it’s just such a cute name.”
Now let’s go back to a previously recorded segment of me talking about some heart warming story from the car negotiation event earlier today.
---
Tell me you wouldn’t watch that. Now some other events:
3. Bus/Train relay: A race across a major city using only public transportation (cabs not included)
4. Eat and run: Within 9 Innings, successfully eat at least 3 of the following items at a baseball game without missing your team’s at bat: Hotdog, Krispy Kreme, full bag of peanuts, garlic fries, full bag of redvines, ballpark nachos
5. The airport sprint: competitors race from a terminal to reach a connecting flight with a laptop bag and one giant rolling carryon. All competitors must be wearing impractical shoes
6. Changes in the Night: Changing a newborn’s diaper in the dark and getting them back to sleep
7. Team competition – Unloading a full moving truck into a buddy’s third floor apartment. Items to be moved will include a sleeper sofa and a large oak armoire
8. Sandwich making
9. I had no idea: Talking a police officer out of a speeding ticket
10. Story Time: Telling a story at a cocktail party or other similar social gathering. Story must be based on true events and must actually be funny. No points awarded for courtesy laughs. Minus one point for every person that walks away in the middle. Bonus points if you can get the group of listeners giggling before the big pay off laugh at the end. You can choose degree of difficulty in the following categories from most to least difficult a) sober, b) drunk, c) falling down drunk, d) Ted Kennedy drunk or e) drunk people who think Dane Cook is funny.
I’ve got lots more in mind, but tell me what other events we should add. This is the beginning of something really important and just think, you will be able to say you were there when it started.
He’s not NFL offensive line big or anything like that and he’s only 6’1”. But he’s one of those guys who seems even bigger than he is. When I was young he was, of course, the strongest man in the entire world. I remember that I couldn’t even lift my “Green Machine” pedal car and yet he could pick it up and carry it up stairs with only one hand. In his younger years he had been a real-life, actual lumber jack working in the woods in northern California and the tales of his strength and ferocity from these years were the thing of myth for me and my brothers growing up. We heard stories of car doors ripped off their hinges, forks being stabbed through people’s hands that dared to play at stealing my Dad’s dessert and on and on.
In truth, my Dad is not a violent man at all. To my knowledge he has never been in a fist fight since I’ve been alive and I don’t recall hearing any stories from his younger days of actual fights. But that was beside the point. When I was on the play ground and we started talking about our Dads and who could beat up who, that was a debate I always waded into with supreme confidence. And, most of the time, for the kids who knew my Dad, there wasn’t much debate. So, why am I telling you all this?
Because there is something deep in all of us that makes that kind of thing matter, not just when we’re young, but today as well.
Or if not all of us, at least the men. Maybe the same is true for women, but with an ever mounting pile of evidence to prove it, it is becoming a well known fact that I know next to nothing about women, so I won’t presume to say whether this applies to women or not.
But for men, part of our nature is the desire to prove ourselves superior in some way, whether it be the strongest, fastest, smartest, toughest, best smile, (ok, maybe not best smile), whatever. When I was young, it was a great source of personal pride that my Dad was big and strong and smart. It wasn’t just about my Dad, it was about me proving myself as well. You see the point of that whole debate is not about Dads, so much as it is about us. We want to be the best to be the son of the best, etc. The thing is this inner desire has been pushed down and buried and mutated in most people. We have this desire to excel and prove ourselves the best, but have fewer and fewer proving grounds.
So we obsess about competitive arenas over which we have no control like pro and college sports. And then we take it to another level and try to pretend we do have control with fantasy sports, sports gambling, referring to your favorite team as “we” (strongly encouraged) and yelling at the TV (which works sometimes for me on field goal attempts and free throws I swear. It’s true, shut up).
But what about the things we do every day? Maybe you get a raise or a promotion at work. Maybe you get a compliment about how well behaved your child is, but does that really prove anything? Does it let you know you are good at something, much less the best?
After countless hours of research (you can’t count what’s not there), I have discovered that the Olympic Games were born out of this inner desire to compete and prove oneself. When they first began, the events were often things that were done as a part of regular life. How far you could throw and spear mattered because throwing a spear might very well be required of you defending yourself from Spartan invaders or in killing something good to eat. How fast you could run mattered because people had to walk and run much more frequently, especially if their aim with a spear wasn’t so good.
Over time though, those events got locked in even though they stopped resembling anything that anyone does in real life. So we continue to have the same events year after year no matter how much changes. When was the last time, for example, you thought to your self “I really need to get a message to Joe. I better get running so I can get to his place by nightfall and tell him.” Or, “I wonder if that boar is in spear range?” I’m guessing if you are like me, it has been days since you had either of those thoughts.
So, to keep Dads from having to brawl, to keep us from going even more over the edge with our sports obsession, and in hopes that we will not become so desperate for a competitive outlet that we will do things like watch cars drive 500 laps around an oval and call it a sport, I have devised a solution that I’m unveiling here and now:
The “Modern Modern Olympic Games For Things That Really Matter.”
The title probably still needs some work, but we won’t let that stop us. Here is what I propose. What we need in society is a competitive outlet that allows us to compete at the things we do every day to decide once and for all who is the best. We need to completely remake the Olympics and replace all those out of date irrelevant events with things that really matter in life. I have started my own list of events here and encourage you to suggest some additions. Then I will contact the most powerful man in the Olympic movement (Bob Costas) and get this done.
Here are my events:
1. Negotiating the purchase of a car. People go head to head with one as the seller and one as the buyer. Each competitor secretly submits under seal the price he wants to get or the price he wants to pay respectively. The one who gets closest to the price wins. Bonus points for bringing a mechanic with you to examine the car, kicking the tires during the inspection, looking under the hood (actual knowledge of how a car engine works is not necessary and frankly is discouraged), using the phrase “what will it take to get you in this car today?” You can expect to see tried and true strategies like “the walk out”, the “threatened walk out”, the “I saw this same car in autotrader for $500 less”, misquoting the Kelly Bluebook value, the “I’ve got another buyer coming after dinner, so I can’t promise it’ll still be here” and much, much more. Tell me you aren’t already excited
2. Potty Break: Taking a child who is being potty trained to the bathroom at the mall food court right after you’ve gotten your food.
Imagine the voice of Bob Costas comes on your TV and says,
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a thriller prepared for you today. In the urban mom division we have Madison and her son Jack against Madeline and her son Jack competing here in the beautifully restored Riverside Mall. As you all know by now, the object of this event is to get your food, find a table and finish the meal. However, as soon as the mothers get their meals, their 30 month old children, both of whom have just started potty training, will demand to go to the bathroom right now. The Mom may choose to disregard the demand, but wet pants will mean immediate disqualification and any delay in the potty training process as determined by a team of overly involved grandmothers, could lead to a 2 year ban from competition.
Further, the Riverside Mall’s crack cleaning team is always on the prowl to clear away food sitting on an empty table, so the Mom’s have to work fast.
As the competition begins, Madison has just chosen a giant slice of cheese pizza from Sbarro while Madeline has opted for Hot Dog on a Stick in hopes that overpaying for a corndog and lemonade will be offset by the potential that Jack is so distracted by the ridiculous outfits that he forgets he has to go potty. Fat chance. We’ve been feeding these kids Capri Suns for the last hour and a half.
And just like that, we have simultaneous demands with both children demanding a potty break before either mom has even found a table. Madeline looks around desperately pushing a stroller with one hand while balancing her food tray with the other while throngs of patrons mill around her aimlessly as if she were invisible. This is heart pounding action folks.
Meanwhile Madison is moving in on an empty table. Oh wait, what’s this? Two business men on their lunch break were waiting on that table and are moving in at the same time. Madison gives them the “young mother’s glare of death” that has made her famous in these competitions back in her home town of Turlock, California. The men wisely recoil in fear as one man actually loses balance and spills his 44 ounce diet soda all over his tie. Oh, you hate to see that, but Madison is un-phased and immediately sits down at the table.
Meanwhile Madeline has given up on finding a table and has decided to just bring her tray of food into the bathroom with her. This is a bold and frankly really yucky move by Madeline. Madeline waits at the open door of the restroom even though there is mysteriously no line. Years of always encountering a line in public restrooms has made her hesitate at the door. This could prove a costly error in such a close competition. She finally proceeds and finds…OH NO…there is no counter surface large enough to set the tray down!!! Madeline looks around in momentary panic, but she is no rookie and quickly jumps in front of a woman in a wheel chair to snag the handicapped stall which also features a fold down changing table which she deftly uses to hold her tray.
Getting seated at a table delayed Madison, but she is to the bathroom now with Jack. Not having the food with her allows her to move quickly to an open stall where she moves in and takes Jack’s pants off. Everything seems to be going smoothly, ….but wait, what’s happening now? Jack is refusing to sit down on the potty “because that’s not the way Daddy does it.” Madison is arguing in vain as she desperately does not want Jack to get in the habit of peeing from a standing position at this tender age. After all, she has new carpet back home to worry about. Jack is standing his ground and now Madison is holding him up over the toilet and she has things going again.
Madeline has finished up with Jack and is putting him back in the stroller. Now Madison is finished as well and she is carrying Jack back to the table and has the lead with Madeline trying to push the stroller and balance the tray.
Hold on! Madeline’s Jack has just made a derogatory comment about a man’s enormous belly and the man heard him.
Madeline is trying to keep her focus as her face turns bright red and Jack is screaming for his “yunch” and now she’s losing it, a pack of teenage girls are headed right toward her to get to the bathroom.
The drink cup is sliding on the tray…
She’s losing balance and…
Oh, no, the drink has spilled and the tray has been dropped, Jack is crying. Just a disaster for Madeline. Her only hope now is that Madison’s food has been cleared away by the cleaning staff while she left it unattended.
As we go back to the food court now and find Madison she is headed toward her table and “THE FOOD IS STILL THERE!! AN AMAZING VICTORY FOR Madison appears to be in hand. Looking closer we discover that Madison wisely left her stroller by her table and pulled over a hichair to send a signal to the cleaning staff that she would be returning. That’s the kind of quick thinking that has earned Madison 2 Olympic medals in this event when she competed with her other sons Riley and Jack. Yes, she has two sons named Jack, but as she explained, “it’s just such a cute name.”
Now let’s go back to a previously recorded segment of me talking about some heart warming story from the car negotiation event earlier today.
---
Tell me you wouldn’t watch that. Now some other events:
3. Bus/Train relay: A race across a major city using only public transportation (cabs not included)
4. Eat and run: Within 9 Innings, successfully eat at least 3 of the following items at a baseball game without missing your team’s at bat: Hotdog, Krispy Kreme, full bag of peanuts, garlic fries, full bag of redvines, ballpark nachos
5. The airport sprint: competitors race from a terminal to reach a connecting flight with a laptop bag and one giant rolling carryon. All competitors must be wearing impractical shoes
6. Changes in the Night: Changing a newborn’s diaper in the dark and getting them back to sleep
7. Team competition – Unloading a full moving truck into a buddy’s third floor apartment. Items to be moved will include a sleeper sofa and a large oak armoire
8. Sandwich making
9. I had no idea: Talking a police officer out of a speeding ticket
10. Story Time: Telling a story at a cocktail party or other similar social gathering. Story must be based on true events and must actually be funny. No points awarded for courtesy laughs. Minus one point for every person that walks away in the middle. Bonus points if you can get the group of listeners giggling before the big pay off laugh at the end. You can choose degree of difficulty in the following categories from most to least difficult a) sober, b) drunk, c) falling down drunk, d) Ted Kennedy drunk or e) drunk people who think Dane Cook is funny.
I’ve got lots more in mind, but tell me what other events we should add. This is the beginning of something really important and just think, you will be able to say you were there when it started.
Comments
Navigating in your car while reading a map WITH two children under 5. Putting on tire chains on the roadside with the family in the car and finally, trying to maintain enough concentration to read a lenghthy blog posting, remember the subject, remember the witty comment you want to make all while supervising homework in SPANISH which you not speak, WWF wrestling with two squirmy boys, serving a delectable afterschool snack and changing a poopy diaper while trying to type with a 2 year old on your lap who likes to drive the mouse.
I had a flashback (cue the Kung Fu music) to my younger days when my mother and father decided to leave me home for the first time as they drove to the west coast (that would be of Florida) to visit some relatives in St. Petersburg. The last thing my Dad said to me (I was 16 then) was “do not take the ski boat out.”
What did I do? I called all of friends and we enjoyed a day of water skiing the next day. When we returned with my Dad’s boat we hurriedly gave the boat a good washing, dried it, and pushed it back into our garage.
My father and mother arrived about 30 minutes later from their trip. I went out to greet them which was probably the first tip off. The first thing my Dad said to me was, “You took the boat out, didn’t you?” I could never lie to my dad so I quickly admitted my guilt and inquired as to how he had come to such a quick deduction when I had made sure the boat was “spic and span” clean.
My father pointed to the “wet” floor underneath the still drying boat. I would have never made it as an “arch-criminal.”
Josh...I would like to submit an endurance/skill challenge of calling just about any customer service number and speaking to a real person and actually solving your problem in the shortest amount of time.