Now, and Then
A Juxtaposition
Young adults walk this earth carrying around a forty ounce metal water container as if their journey on this morning will carry them across the desert sands of Nevada.
Bear Bryant worked his football team in the heat of an August Alabama absent water breaks. If you needed a water break you were weak, too weak to play at Alabama.
As a young kid we played every sport in any weather, no matter the heat and humidity of a Baltimore Summer. A run to the water fountain was a scarce treat, and you were told not to actually drink the water, but to rinse and spit. To actually consume some amount of water and hydration during a vigorous work-out was said to cause cramps. Can’t have the big fullback cramping up and missing a block during the big game. “Eat a salt tablet” the coaches cry.
Apparently the marketing of “Gator-Ade” as required hydration during athletics has reached an ugly set of tentacles out into the palates crowd, or women who decide to wear leggings and shop all day.
Except all those metal cannisters aren’t full of specialty chemicals designed to renew, endorsed by Michael Jordan himself, but just plain old water. If plain old water can now be defined as expensive filtered and spring water sold in plastic bottles by the billions. Tap water? No thank you, have you any small, expensive, square bottles that say “Fiji” on the side?
Yeti metal bottles, Stanley, if you don’t have the latest, most stylish color offering, well ladies, pardon my French, but “you ain’t shit”. No sense in having the Range Rover, the Birken Bag, the Lululemon outfit, and the expensive Prada oversized sunglasses when stepping out to step class, you have to accessorize. Doesn’t she look adorable with that pony tail leaking from the bright yellow truckers hat? What? Of course those are “24’s” on the Range Rover, notice the centers don’t spin while the car moves? Yes, it is a custom wrap color, thank you for noticing.
When you are already the top three percent, who can appear at the gym at 10AM on a random Tuesday morning, instead of an office workplace, while the under-school-age children have all been left with the Nanny or Au Pair, you might as well complete the outfit. A forty ounce shocking pink water container will capture some attention, and when you’ve spent well over a hundred grand to be here, one never noticed the cost on the platinum card to begin with, besides, see that woman over there, she has a black card.
We know, we stopped at the same coffee spot one morning, we saw her pay for her eleven dollar latte flat white, double chocolate, mocha, creme fresh, designer drink with one. I wanted to hear the name called but it was so quick, Zahara, Zara, how many names can begin with a “Z”? I wanted to get her name, introduce ourselves, maybe get the kids together for a “play date”. There is that new “ball pit” place with trampolines at the mall.
That woman always looks together. How couldn’t she, the Au Pair has the children, she does Pilates five days a week and lives on salads and smoothies. And has thousands in aging creams in her private double sink, female only, bathroom, adjacent to her wardrobe closet as big as a small apartment. Have you seen her shoe closet, it is immense. There are gradations in the color palette of beige don’t you know, sometimes you need to get the caramel accents just right.
We had no Au Pair, we had no mother either for that matter, back in the day. We were told to vacate the home early in the morning, and were expected back for dinner. We disappeared for hours on end, our mothers had no idea of our whereabouts. We had no daycare, no scheduled play time, and cartoons ran only on Saturdays, the day we were forced to vacate the home. Vacate as long as the lawn was already cut, and the chores finished. There were no home cooked meals on Saturday, no waffles, no eggs, or bacon. That was all reserved for the elusive “dad”, the one who worked full-time.
We ate cereal, and entertained ourselves by reading the box. Mostly cornflakes, but now and then broke mom down at the grocery store with just the right amount of pleading and “fit”, and escaped with some sugar infested overpriced mess guaranteed to send us to school all hopped up as if shot up with methamphetamine. The cheap plastic prize was nice, as long as an older sibling didn’t get to it first.
When the ballfields got boring there was always a nearby woods. Back then we had yet to see development envelope the entire town area in growth. There used to be open spaces of land and trees. With a small stream or creek.
Hidden inside the woods you’d learn how to smoke cigarettes, make a fire, burn things. How to soak every bit of clothing in the smallest amount of creek flow. How to ruin a pair of sneakers by first soaking them in fetid standing water, then setting them too close to the fire to dry until the side rubber began to melt, and the canvas tops singed.
More than one finger, or appendage was sacrificed to the pen knife, not necessarily cut clean off, but splayed open, cut open, damaged. Some poor sap always got pegged with a log a few guys struggled to lift, and decided to just throw toward a crowd. An ankle snapped here, a foot damaged there, we witnessed casualties in the woods as if our own little Parkvillian Vietnam.
Those weekly visits to the “small woods” were no hand drawn turkey in day care as mom posed and primped for the hot trainer in pilates class. Those make-shift games at the empty tennis courts that began as hockey until there weren’t enough sticks usually resulted in a local dentist’s income. Twenty-three went out, five limped home, three bled. Or what you might call a normal neighborhood Saturday.
I get it. I understand. I was a coach during those years where we had to assign a parent to “please bring the oranges” this week. On a team of eleven actual soccer players on field at a time, and only four proficient in the game, there are only maybe five total players a bit exhausted from the contest and who need some sustenance to get through the second half unwinded. But somehow the dirk kickers, and hanger-ons managed to get into those oranges first. My best players hands-on-hips, dripping in sweat, and standing, not sitting. Eager to get back out on the field. Poor real talent got their oranges last. You just knew their fathers were “king of the woods” back when.
Some scratched into the earth with sticks, some chatted about the boys watching their game. I was trying to lecture about the proclivities and success of our opponent bringing the ball down the right side a bit too easily for my own liking, and questioning how our middle back allowed others to control “her field”, but all anyone wanted to do was complain about being sticky from all those oranges, and where was that plastic water bottle to wash their hands.
At least we’ve come a long way, from plastic to expensive stainless steel.
Back in the day we were free all day to do as we pleased on weekends, and after school. Sure we played organized baseball, football, soccer, and basketball. But more than not it was up to us at eleven years of age to find a way to get to the field. Dad was working a second job, and mom too busy on her one day off running necessary family errands to stop and get us to the game at 3PM. You either hitched a ride from another family, or walked a few miles. No need complaining, there were no options, and no oranges.
There were no participation trophies either, and somehow, curiously, not a mom in the bunch that looked anything like today’s mom climbing out of that Range Rover. Not a one. In the 1960’s every half-decent looking woman in town had run out to California to try to make their way into the movies. All the moms you knew from the baseball team, or even the teachers at school, they all looked like a bad version of Phyllis Diller. I guess it didn’t help that new mad-made fabrics were all the rage.
McDonald’s had yet to make its way into Baltimore then, so lunch was a PB&J. A glass of milk. Whole milk. Not 2%, not “Malk”, not low fat, not some milk substitute. Just milk. Far as we all knew there was milk. Singular. Not plural. Cows milk. Not from any other species. It was cold, it got the peanut butter unstuck from the top of your palette, and washed it down. Coca-cola was for rich kids, we couldn’t afford it.
You didn’t ask mom to cut the crust. Ask her something that ridiculous and you weren’t going back out into the woods in the afternoon. She’d find extra chores for you to do. All the God damned nutrients were in the crust, didn’t you understand? Now wash up, go back out to play, and do not come home before five. Let your poor father get home from a hard days work and swallow a beer before he has to deal with you and your shit. That poor man.
That Range Rover mom and her little precious are both lactose intolerant and Gluten-free, of course. An expensive pomegranate juice blend and greens laden salad at the cafe solves the Saturday empty stomach in this day and age.
Come on, man, it is only a metal water container. Besides, every company on earth gives them away by the dozens at fairs, trade-shows, and events. Every home has dozens, all with a logo.
It isn’t the water bottle damn it, it is what that pink oversized ridiculous appendage tells the world.
Pampered, weak, easily led, duped, a lemming, a me-too, not an original thought enters the brain. Fed lies, swallowing lies, centered on piffle and whimsy, incapable of recognizing reality, and real life. Vain, shallow, thinking that climbing from an overpriced future break-down machine covered in other people’s names somehow elevates you. When if you were truly elevated they’d be wearing your name.
Abbreviating time with your own children in favor of day care and Au Pairs, and then taking that precious time to spoil little precious. Cloning, by wrapping them in the kiddie-version of the same worthless labels. Instilling with materialism and not spiritualism.
Hard to learn about the warmth and importance of family from the Au Pair, or day care employee.
Difficult to learn to deal with real problems when the score doesn’t count, there are oranges and juice boxes ready and waiting at half-time, and the trophy is guaranteed.
How does one deal with that tough boss when they never faced down a real bully in the woods, one who actually enjoyed the sight of blood, as long as it wasn’t their own.
Trucker hat fur booted beauties don’t need constant hydration, they need a values adjustment. Sad, but they’ve advanced to adult parental age absent any understanding of what holds true meaning in life.
Unfortunately the 97% that aren’t living this Range Rover lifestyle aspire to live this 3% of the population Range Rover lifestyle. Instead of attempting to create the best in a spiritual, close knit, family reliant on morals, values, and principles. Real game changers in life. Forget the struggle, everyone struggles with something, it isn’t how big the home is, it is that someone makes it a home. Where values and morals and principles count.
The colorful stainless steel water bottle is but a symbol of the over-arching societal problem that currently exists, a vacuous population of the morally bankrupt who have managed to claim all the wealth. There exist no benevolent statesman any longer, there are no benefactors, there are no wealthy contributors to the greater good.
All of their “good” is rooted inside their own home, and competing with other like minded selfish to have the most toys and branded baubles.
Bear Bryant is long dead. His potential players today have an NIL contract, a custom made diamond and gold Mercedes emblem around their necks, they preen, and pose.
And the “little woods” is long, long, gone. Full of tract housing built and sold for twenty ground, now worth over a half million and more. We were never thanked by that developer for burning down half the woods he eventually had to clear.
I’ve lived a short lifetime. America changed.
From a disputed water fountain to a bright colored stainless steel oversized container.
But are we really better off?