Generally, the most important conversations of our lives take place at barbecues. Everyone knows that. Everyone also knows why steroids made Hulk-a-mania awesome, while making Barry Bonds look like a tool. You could clearly see the juice leaking out of the Hulkster's bicep every time he flexed, but it was cool because he wasn't even real. Bonds was, for a little while.
So what do steroids, the Hulkster and barbecues have in common? Well, other than me shooting up steroids before power-bombing the Hulkster through the wooden table for drinking all the ketchup at the BBQ while no one was looking? Who drinks ketchup? Anyway, it's simple. This weekend I had a conversation with my buddy Paul and his dad around the grill about two awesome athletes: Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz. It actually had nothing to do with steroids, but something closely related. (Got you!)
In brief, although Phelps' million-dollar skivvies, hi-tech sports goggles, little rubber hat and delicious 12,000 calorie per day training regimen make him a pretty nasty swimmer, Spitz had long hair and a moustache. Whereas the media decided to run features on Phelps which portrayed him as something eerily close to a scientific experiment (measuring his wingspan, shoulder to waist ratio and lauding his fish-like flippers), Spitz looked like my next-door neighbor Dale. Lastly, Spitz gave us all the feeling that, as pretty normal guys, we could achieve something that was hardly normal at all. Clearly I would not win seven gold medals at one Olympics, but I could hope for at least four or five.
Watching Phelps, I was not inspired in quite the same way. See, I am only five foot seven. Also, my hands are not as big as Frisbees. I do have double-jointed fingers, but unfortunately God stopped there, leaving me without triple jointed knee-caps and disjointed ankles that allow my feet to move as fast as boat propellers. My shoulder-to-waist ratio is just enough to make me ridiculously attractive, though it falls short in preparing me to flee from oncoming dolphins.
Truthfully, the whole discussion really got me thinking. It seems the further our technologies advance, and the more athletes continue to evolve, the less we are able to really relate. It was so cool that Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, and watching made me very proud to be an American. However, I was most excited to see Usain Bolt slow just short of the finish line and turn around to taunt the dudes behind him. It was just as I would have done had I hit a mammoth homer off of one of my housemates during night whiffle ball. Something about making fun of losers just makes me feel more like a human. Just the same, Mark Spitz probably knew he could swim faster without that 'stache, but he chose to win his medals with it, something I am sure we will never see again.
What it all boiled down to was the few minutes we spent talking about each of these three athletes (sorry Hulk, not you). When we spoke about Phelps, we were briefly describing the awe we felt for his achievements, but we quickly moved on to Bolt, and then to Spitz. Though it was amazing what Phelps did, Bolt and Spitz not only inspired the same awe, but made us laugh like we were being tickled by little bunnies with carrots in their paws. (Are they paws? I am not a biologist.) Isn't that so much cooler?
