Partly Cloudy With a Chance of Fastballs

A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 53rd birthday. And over a couple of rounds that were sent my way from regularly familiar patrons and an overly friendly barmaid, half my age, we started discussing how the world has gotten more and more confusing as we have grown more aged.

I happen to like sports because of the action (except golf- no action here, just a long walk interrupted by whacking a little white ball to and fro) and the  logical progression from beginning to end. I can follow Sports and comprehend 99 percent easily.

When I was a child, my maternal grandfather would plop into his “Barka-lounger” (if you go to the Museum of Natural History in the Archie Bunker Wing, you can see the actual reconstructed  prehistoric recliner there) and watch sports on his Zenith with the “doink-doink” remote from Saturday morning until family dinner on Sunday night.  

He would start each and every Saturday’s sports viewing ritual  by cringing when Yugoslavian ski jumper- Vinko Bogataj would crash down the mountain to illustrate “The Agony of Defeat” on ABC’s Wide World of Sports and finish up on Sunday with the professional “Sport of the Season” or with “Mean” Gene Okerlund announcing the winner of the AWA Championship Belt Bloody Death Match in the squared circle.

Now sports have evolved  greatly since then and you can watch it 24/7, 365 days a year between 8-18 different stations in English alone. Or if you hang with us “Beer Cap Broadcasters” and watch on 15 different huge plasma TV’s that reflect neon beer logos back at most viewers and patrons to obscure the score from most angles. Darwinism in sports show by the fact  that they are instituting instant replays and showing how many human errors that our refs and umps make, that we overlooked for decades gone by.  

But still, sports in general are not confounding or perplexing. I have found that older male adults can get befuddled (myself included) easily and stare in wonder at things that younger people take for granted and without question...like the ability to take a picture of yourself in a bathroom mirror and still post this blurry shot of yourself on a social networking site and get 6,000 friend requests.  

Like going to the frozen food section of the supermarket , realizing that you are not overweight and searching  for “Regular Cuisine” TV Dinners. Like how can someone buy “Vegetarian Liver?" ( No one I know has ever seen a carrot or squash with internal organs. I get the head of lettuce, or eye on a potato or ear of corn or hearts of palm...but that is figurative and not literal . They are not real body parts.  And there is no liver, or spleen or intestines in any vegetable grown on this Earth).  But it is like wondering at  the difference between a weather forecast of  “Partly Sunny” and “Partly Cloudy” (what is the other part?)  Or like the proper answer to the question with  a female spouse asking, “Do these eyeglasses make my face look fat?”  (I suspect that  there is NO right answer).

Between my smartphone apps, cable box DVR and my in-dash GPS, it is  easy to be bewildered. But when it comes down to it, I find it much easier to understand how outfielder Curtis Pride  had a 13 year career in Major League Baseball while being completely and utterly deaf,  then why Ben Stiller wants to call his “Tropic Thunder” movie sequel – “Arctic Lightning!”