By Steve Janoski
Growing up, I was probably one of the biggest sports fans I knew… and I knew a lot of them.
Everything was all about the games. You were judged in school by what football team you liked, and how they played on Sunday was a direct measure of the abuse you might or might not have to endure the following day.
We had all the jerseys and knew all the stats — we knew whether or not Emmitt Smith’s shoulder had dislocated in practice or Michael Irvin had been arrested over the weekend — and how it was all going to affect the next game.
And, after bleeding by your TV every Sunday for four months, getting to watch your team win the Super Bowl was a triumph of immense proportions that you knew was going to give you bragging rights over all of your friends (especially the Cowboys fans) until at least the following September.
We lived and died by the game, and it truly meant something to us.
As time progressed, however, it changed for me. No longer personally involved in football (or any sport) after high school, I found it hard to find that same fire on Sundays, and as I matured, I realized this might not be a bad thing.
Looking back I realized that for all those years, I had taken the whole thing too seriously. I got too upset when the Giants would take a beating or the Red Sox would blow a ninth-inning lead in typical Red Sox fashion, and the step back might have been a necessary one for my own sanity.
I still love watching the games, of course, and cursing a blue streak when a save is blown or a touchdown is scored against is still a common occurrence for me.
But that overwhelming stress is gone, and that empty feeling after a playoff loss or a season-ending skid has faded out along with the appeal of wearing another man’s name on the back of my shirt.
It’s important to remember that in the end, these games mean nothing in the overarching novels of our lives.
We live a short enough time as it is, and to put so much emphasis on something that we can’t control in the least is dangerous. I recently read an awe-inspiring statistic that 15 percent of men would miss the birth of their first child if their team was in the Super Bowl and they had the chance to go.
There’s nothing wrong with being a fan, of course, and even I am not jaded enough to miss the inherent beauty of certain remarkable happenings in sports such as the 2007 Super Bowl or the 2004 Red Sox-Yankees series.
But then having become more involved with boxing over the last five years and becoming more of an “active” participant in my sport of choice has also made the notion of sitting on a couch drinking beer while referring to the team I’m watching as “we” seem even more ludicrous.
I am reminded of the scene in Good Will Hunting when Robin Williams is trying to explain to Matt Damon why he gave up the chance to see Game 6 of the 1975 World Series (one of the great games in Red Sox history) for the chance to talk to a beautiful woman at a bar who would later become his wife.
“I just slid my ticket across the table and I said, ‘Sorry guys, I gotta’ see about a girl,’ Williams said.
He had his priorities straight.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/sports/139227504_What_s_more_important_-a_game_or_your_girl_.html
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The empty lives of fantasy football junkies
BY STEVE JANOSKI
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010
We all know a guy like him. He’s been a Giants’ fan since you were in first grade together, but all of a sudden, he comes into the bar with a Maurice Jones-Drew jersey on a Sunday afternoon.
His opening comment is likely going to be along the lines of, “Bro, you’ll never guess who I got on my fantasy team— we’re gonna’ be siiiiick this year.” Clearly, he had the first pick in his fantasy football draft…and then he went out and bought the jersey of the guy he drafted.
Shortly after, he begins listing all the players he chose, and you stop listening and tip your pint glass back in the attempt to stop your ears from bleeding because really, who cares who anybody else has on their fantasy team?
Such is what the first weeks of the football season have become.
Long ago, we used to root for the team we actually liked— now, pretending to be the Jerry Jones of our very own football team has us rooting for players we hate on teams we despise.
I was guilty of this last year when I picked Dallas Cowboys running back Marion Barber to be on my team, “The Bayshore Yagabawms.”
I should have known better, because as a lifelong Giants fan, nobody has hated the Cowboys organization with more vigor than I.
Regardless, in a move that rivaled Benedict Arnold’s treason, I still picked Barber.
I realized the trappings of fantasy football during the Giants- Cowboys game last year as I watched Barber rip off run after run, killing my team but earning my fake team points.
On one play, he tore through the line and sprung for a 20 or 30 yard run, causing me to curse vehemently at the TV all the while being quietly semi-happy that I was getting fantasy points for it, only to end the play cursing and swearing again when Barber gimped off the field clutching his hamstring seconds later (an injury that put the Yagabawms in the cellar for the rest of the year.)
Fantasy football had turned me into an indecisive, blithering idiot in a matter of seconds, and I felt guilty, dirty even, for having rooted for Barber against my boys for even a second.
This year, although I refused to draft any Cowboys, I made the mistake of trying to manage four different teams simultaneously. What I didn’t realize is that running multiple teams is like trying to date more than one woman at a time— if you think you’re handling it smoothly and things are going well, you’re probably about one step away from a horrific, Chernobyl-style disaster that will leave bodies in the streets and cities destroyed.
Some guys, I’ve heard, have gone as far as managing 10 or 15 leagues at a time.
I don’t know where they find the time to actually watch the games in between managing their mythical teams, but it’s a safe bet that they don’t have to worry about things like dating.
On the other hand, fantasy football does give me a reason to watch games that the Giants aren’t playing in, and offers me someone to root for because, in a roundabout way, I’ve got money on them.
It’s also been adept at getting the general public more into football—one rookie fan I know was overheard during a draft whispering, “What’s a ‘bye week?’”
Now, this Don Quixote of the football world is welded to the TVs at the local dives every Sunday, alternating between fits of joy and despair as the scores tumble and rise—it’s like sitting at a craps table, except the drinks aren’t free and nobody cares when you win.
The NFL has scored huge with fantasy football, and as the game tightens its narcotic grip on the hearts and minds of the young males of this country, one wonders whether “Draft Day” will eventually become a holiday, like some say the day after the Super Bowl should be.
If it does, I’m taking that whole week off, because I don’t want to hear who everybody picked.
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010
We all know a guy like him. He’s been a Giants’ fan since you were in first grade together, but all of a sudden, he comes into the bar with a Maurice Jones-Drew jersey on a Sunday afternoon.
His opening comment is likely going to be along the lines of, “Bro, you’ll never guess who I got on my fantasy team— we’re gonna’ be siiiiick this year.” Clearly, he had the first pick in his fantasy football draft…and then he went out and bought the jersey of the guy he drafted.
Shortly after, he begins listing all the players he chose, and you stop listening and tip your pint glass back in the attempt to stop your ears from bleeding because really, who cares who anybody else has on their fantasy team?
Such is what the first weeks of the football season have become.
Long ago, we used to root for the team we actually liked— now, pretending to be the Jerry Jones of our very own football team has us rooting for players we hate on teams we despise.
I was guilty of this last year when I picked Dallas Cowboys running back Marion Barber to be on my team, “The Bayshore Yagabawms.”
I should have known better, because as a lifelong Giants fan, nobody has hated the Cowboys organization with more vigor than I.
Regardless, in a move that rivaled Benedict Arnold’s treason, I still picked Barber.
I realized the trappings of fantasy football during the Giants- Cowboys game last year as I watched Barber rip off run after run, killing my team but earning my fake team points.
On one play, he tore through the line and sprung for a 20 or 30 yard run, causing me to curse vehemently at the TV all the while being quietly semi-happy that I was getting fantasy points for it, only to end the play cursing and swearing again when Barber gimped off the field clutching his hamstring seconds later (an injury that put the Yagabawms in the cellar for the rest of the year.)
Fantasy football had turned me into an indecisive, blithering idiot in a matter of seconds, and I felt guilty, dirty even, for having rooted for Barber against my boys for even a second.
This year, although I refused to draft any Cowboys, I made the mistake of trying to manage four different teams simultaneously. What I didn’t realize is that running multiple teams is like trying to date more than one woman at a time— if you think you’re handling it smoothly and things are going well, you’re probably about one step away from a horrific, Chernobyl-style disaster that will leave bodies in the streets and cities destroyed.
Some guys, I’ve heard, have gone as far as managing 10 or 15 leagues at a time.
I don’t know where they find the time to actually watch the games in between managing their mythical teams, but it’s a safe bet that they don’t have to worry about things like dating.
On the other hand, fantasy football does give me a reason to watch games that the Giants aren’t playing in, and offers me someone to root for because, in a roundabout way, I’ve got money on them.
It’s also been adept at getting the general public more into football—one rookie fan I know was overheard during a draft whispering, “What’s a ‘bye week?’”
Now, this Don Quixote of the football world is welded to the TVs at the local dives every Sunday, alternating between fits of joy and despair as the scores tumble and rise—it’s like sitting at a craps table, except the drinks aren’t free and nobody cares when you win.
The NFL has scored huge with fantasy football, and as the game tightens its narcotic grip on the hearts and minds of the young males of this country, one wonders whether “Draft Day” will eventually become a holiday, like some say the day after the Super Bowl should be.
If it does, I’m taking that whole week off, because I don’t want to hear who everybody picked.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
New York crashes Jersey’s Giant party
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
BY STEVE JANOSKI
I’ve heard it on the radio waves, on TV, and seen the excited announcements on Facebook for the past week— our very own Giants Stadium is finally going to get the Super Bowl in 2014.
This is a good thing for both the area and the NFL. It’ll bring business to the state, and it will also be nice to see football being played once again as the real men used to play it—outside in the brutal elements, come snow, sleet, or rain.
With the right weather conditions (or the wrong ones, if you’re playing), we might even have a repeat of the legendary Ice Bowl—the 1967 NFL title game played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the temperature was a balmy negative 13 degrees at game time and the referees couldn’t use their whistles because they froze to their lips on contact.
That’s some manly stuff right there.
Of course, even with all of the excitement over the game, there’s one thing that bothers me—people, it seems, need a geography lesson on where exactly Giants Stadium is.
Say it with me boys, all you announcers and pundits and sportswriters across this great land—it’s in "New Jersey."
I know you want to forget about us except when making your poor jokes about the shore or big hair or any of the other…stuff…that has floated around about us over the years, but now, you’ve got to acknowledge us.
Too long have we taken the back seat to that shining city across the Hudson, and this latest affront on the part of the national media in referring to it as a "New York Super Bowl" is recklessly belligerent toward our state.
This won’t be a "New York Super Bowl" any more than the Knicks are a New Jersey disgrace—we will be dealing with the traffic, we’ll be putting up with the tourists, and most importantly, we’ll be bringing in the cash from it.
And rightfully so.
New York has long claimed the Giants as their own, even though the team played in three different states at various times before finally settling in the Meadowlands in 1976; while East Rutherford is only 7 miles from Times Square, you’ve still got to cross one big state line to get there.
Although I can only talk as a Giants fan, even the New York Jets, by far a more "New York" team, have played at the Meadowlands for 26 years after hustling out of Shea Stadium.
What’s that say about the city and football?
What says even more is that in all of the Giants games I’ve ever been to, I have yet to hear any kind of New York accent or talk to any fancy folks from Manhattan or Queens who made the trek out to the swamps to come see "their" team play.
It’s folks from Wayne or West Caldwell, Bayonne or Belleville, that go the games, pay the exorbitant parking fees, and trade their less-used appendages for the $10 beers.
I’ve accepted that the team that plays in New Jersey in the stadium built for no other purpose than to house them still has that damned "NY" on their helmets—some things just aren’t going to change.
But at least for the next four years, I want it tattooed on these announcers’ foreheads that East Rutherford isn’t New York, and that this game will be among New Jersey’s shining moments whether they like it or not.
So no more "New York Super Bowl."
No more "NY/NJ Super Bowl."
No more "New York Area Super Bowl."
With the right weather conditions (or the wrong ones, if you’re playing), we might even have a repeat of the legendary Ice Bowl—the 1967 NFL title game played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the temperature was a balmy negative 13 degrees at game time and the referees couldn’t use their whistles because they froze to their lips on contact.
That’s some manly stuff right there.
Of course, even with all of the excitement over the game, there’s one thing that bothers me—people, it seems, need a geography lesson on where exactly Giants Stadium is.
Say it with me boys, all you announcers and pundits and sportswriters across this great land—it’s in "New Jersey."
I know you want to forget about us except when making your poor jokes about the shore or big hair or any of the other…stuff…that has floated around about us over the years, but now, you’ve got to acknowledge us.
Too long have we taken the back seat to that shining city across the Hudson, and this latest affront on the part of the national media in referring to it as a "New York Super Bowl" is recklessly belligerent toward our state.
This won’t be a "New York Super Bowl" any more than the Knicks are a New Jersey disgrace—we will be dealing with the traffic, we’ll be putting up with the tourists, and most importantly, we’ll be bringing in the cash from it.
And rightfully so.
New York has long claimed the Giants as their own, even though the team played in three different states at various times before finally settling in the Meadowlands in 1976; while East Rutherford is only 7 miles from Times Square, you’ve still got to cross one big state line to get there.
Although I can only talk as a Giants fan, even the New York Jets, by far a more "New York" team, have played at the Meadowlands for 26 years after hustling out of Shea Stadium.
What’s that say about the city and football?
What says even more is that in all of the Giants games I’ve ever been to, I have yet to hear any kind of New York accent or talk to any fancy folks from Manhattan or Queens who made the trek out to the swamps to come see "their" team play.
It’s folks from Wayne or West Caldwell, Bayonne or Belleville, that go the games, pay the exorbitant parking fees, and trade their less-used appendages for the $10 beers.
I’ve accepted that the team that plays in New Jersey in the stadium built for no other purpose than to house them still has that damned "NY" on their helmets—some things just aren’t going to change.
But at least for the next four years, I want it tattooed on these announcers’ foreheads that East Rutherford isn’t New York, and that this game will be among New Jersey’s shining moments whether they like it or not.
So no more "New York Super Bowl."
No more "NY/NJ Super Bowl."
No more "New York Area Super Bowl."
It’s New Jersey. Get it right, especially you New Yorkers.
Otherwise, I might just have to start confusing Manhattan and Long Island…and we all know how much you’ll like that.
"Manhattan? Mastic? It’s all the same to me."
http://www.northjersey.com/sports/pro_sports/95480194_New_York_crashes_Jersey_s_Giant_party.html
Monday, October 25, 2010
Big Easy’s pain strikes close to home
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
By Steve Janoski
When the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl this past February amongst a chorus of “Who dats” and pre-Mardi Gras debauchery, we all heard about was how good this would be for the people of the city after the apocalyptic destruction that Hurricane Katrina had heaped upon them.
Katrina? I thought. Wasn’t that like five years ago?
Saying that the Saints winning the Super Bowl made people forget about Katrina seemed like saying the Bears want to win this year so Chicagoans can get over the great fire of 1871.
After five years, I thought, the city was probably back to where it was before with high-rises a Superdome and Cajun food, because this is America, and we rebuild speedily and without mercy — and I rooted against the Saints because of this.
How wrong I was.
I didn’t understand this until I stood in Pequannock’s lower end last month, and saw for myself what a flood does. It not only destroys houses, but after throwing up all of the trash and sewage we dump in it, sucks the people’s spirits with it on its return to its banks.
It was in the despondent eyes peaking out from under slouched hats as the men gazed towards their swamped homes, or the aimless wandering that people do when they have nowhere to go, nothing to do except stand in the rain.
The only chorus in Pequannock that day was the rattling machine-gun song fashioned from the generator engines that showed that some folks just wouldn’t leave, come hell or higher water.
The cleanup has been massive, and the reconstruction will be that much harder.
Many people have had enough, and are looking to be bought out so they never have to deal with a watery plague ever again; ugly catchwords and phrases like “FEMA,” “catastrophe,” and “Army Corps of Engineers” are uttered in our own streets.
Coinciding appropriately with our own flooding, HBO has begun running a new drama called “Treme,” which focuses on the people of New Orleans immediately after Katrina — and finally the vicious picture has begun to gather in my head.
The Pequannock flooding was unruly — the New Orleans flooding was armed to the teeth while on steroids and meth.
We’ve all seen the pictures of the bodies floating in the hurricane water, heard the ugly stories about the armed mobs and the utter devastation — we’ve been under a media inundation for the past five years about Katrina that rivals the height of the waters themselves.
Under those conditions, it becomes easy to have a calloused heart about the city and to believe the positively selfish idea that, “It’s their problem. We’ve all got our own.”
But Treme is the first show that’s put a regular face on the people and doesn’t ask us to pity them, but to just acknowledge that they’re still there.
It is written with the colorful flair and fiery style that only New Orleans has, and writer-producer David Simon focuses (as he did with Baltimore in his previous series “The Wire”) on the city as a living, breathing character, not simply a place where people live.
The human characters’ eyes hold the reflections of the those shattered neighborhoods in the pictures we’ve all looked away from, while the city’s character stems from all the things that New Orleans has become famous for, from the jazz players (many of whom play themselves in the show) to the food to…yes, its football team.
So I take it back, Saints.
Your city needed that win to strengthen its spirit, to remind the people that the Superdome is more than just an evacuation site, and that if a team once nicknamed the “Aint’s” can beat Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl, anything can happen.
I hope that it steels the spines of that trickle of people who are, five years later, just returning to their homes, and makes them fiercely determined to build New Orleans into the great city it once was, a city that, in John Goodman’s character’s words from Treme, “lives in the imagination of the world.”
If it does, then that game was worth its weight in old New Orleans rum.
By Steve Janoski
When the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl this past February amongst a chorus of “Who dats” and pre-Mardi Gras debauchery, we all heard about was how good this would be for the people of the city after the apocalyptic destruction that Hurricane Katrina had heaped upon them.
Katrina? I thought. Wasn’t that like five years ago?
Saying that the Saints winning the Super Bowl made people forget about Katrina seemed like saying the Bears want to win this year so Chicagoans can get over the great fire of 1871.
After five years, I thought, the city was probably back to where it was before with high-rises a Superdome and Cajun food, because this is America, and we rebuild speedily and without mercy — and I rooted against the Saints because of this.
How wrong I was.
I didn’t understand this until I stood in Pequannock’s lower end last month, and saw for myself what a flood does. It not only destroys houses, but after throwing up all of the trash and sewage we dump in it, sucks the people’s spirits with it on its return to its banks.
It was in the despondent eyes peaking out from under slouched hats as the men gazed towards their swamped homes, or the aimless wandering that people do when they have nowhere to go, nothing to do except stand in the rain.
The only chorus in Pequannock that day was the rattling machine-gun song fashioned from the generator engines that showed that some folks just wouldn’t leave, come hell or higher water.
The cleanup has been massive, and the reconstruction will be that much harder.
Many people have had enough, and are looking to be bought out so they never have to deal with a watery plague ever again; ugly catchwords and phrases like “FEMA,” “catastrophe,” and “Army Corps of Engineers” are uttered in our own streets.
Coinciding appropriately with our own flooding, HBO has begun running a new drama called “Treme,” which focuses on the people of New Orleans immediately after Katrina — and finally the vicious picture has begun to gather in my head.
The Pequannock flooding was unruly — the New Orleans flooding was armed to the teeth while on steroids and meth.
We’ve all seen the pictures of the bodies floating in the hurricane water, heard the ugly stories about the armed mobs and the utter devastation — we’ve been under a media inundation for the past five years about Katrina that rivals the height of the waters themselves.
Under those conditions, it becomes easy to have a calloused heart about the city and to believe the positively selfish idea that, “It’s their problem. We’ve all got our own.”
But Treme is the first show that’s put a regular face on the people and doesn’t ask us to pity them, but to just acknowledge that they’re still there.
It is written with the colorful flair and fiery style that only New Orleans has, and writer-producer David Simon focuses (as he did with Baltimore in his previous series “The Wire”) on the city as a living, breathing character, not simply a place where people live.
The human characters’ eyes hold the reflections of the those shattered neighborhoods in the pictures we’ve all looked away from, while the city’s character stems from all the things that New Orleans has become famous for, from the jazz players (many of whom play themselves in the show) to the food to…yes, its football team.
So I take it back, Saints.
Your city needed that win to strengthen its spirit, to remind the people that the Superdome is more than just an evacuation site, and that if a team once nicknamed the “Aint’s” can beat Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl, anything can happen.
I hope that it steels the spines of that trickle of people who are, five years later, just returning to their homes, and makes them fiercely determined to build New Orleans into the great city it once was, a city that, in John Goodman’s character’s words from Treme, “lives in the imagination of the world.”
If it does, then that game was worth its weight in old New Orleans rum.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Defending our last bastion
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
By Steve Janoski
Only in Brooklyn could the idea of bringing a baby inside a bar sound anywhere near a good idea — but that's what happening, according to Jessica Ravitz's recent article on CNN.com, "Brooklyn brewhaha: Babies in bars."
Ravitz chronicles the story of one Matt Gross, 35, an editor for the blog DadWagon and the columnist who writes the Frugal Traveler in the New York Times. He's also the stay-at-home father of a 14-month old daughter.
In the article, Gross says that he "longs for adult contact," and that though he has a child, he "doesn't want to be excluded from the adult world," so he brings his daughter with him to the bar.
The craze has apparently caught on in Brooklyn, where bar patrons are forced to put up with middle-aged adolescents who can't tear themselves away from the bottle for long enough to raise a kid.
My objections to this are multilayered. As a 25-year-old pub connoisseur, I am revolted by the idea of sitting in my neighborhood dive surrounded by children.
The guys I know go to bars to be out with other adults. We go to hit on women, or to commiserate about what said women have done to us. We tell stories about other nights drinking, laugh at crude jokes, and, depending on the night of the week and the amount imbibed, other things that the majority of society frowns on.
But it's OK. Why? Because that's our escape from the straight-laced job or the overbearing wife, and our last, great hiding place from the never-ending responsibilities that are heaped on us over the course of life.
Children, however, have the run of the country. Everything is about "the children" — some celebrity has a costume malfunction at the Super Bowl, and it's "What about the children!?" If an athlete gets arrested for some indiscretion, its always, "What does this tell the children!?"
Kids can go to any movie theater or restaurant, and other patrons are expected to put up with any kind of screaming fits or other baby issues they might have. And that's fine — this is the way it is.
But honestly, the bars? Have they no mercy or compassion for this last bastion of true adulthood? We who go to bars do not want to be surrounded by children and strollers and other reminders of either present or future responsibilities…we just want to have a beer after work or enjoy a Friday night.
And on top of that, what does it say about the fathers themselves, putting a little kid in harm's way at a bar because you "long for adult contact?"
Any place where alcohol is served en masse' is going to come with a certain degree of danger, and bars are known for being the place where you…well, get drunk. And when those people get drunk, they act in wholly different ways than they would otherwise.
Alcohol is involved in a good chunk of violent crimes — you don't often hear about the guy who drank too much Gatorade one night and decided to shoot his wife. Why put a little kid in the same spot where a lot of crimes start, and a good amount end?
The danger is not just from a lone drunken basket case, either. What happens if a guy has a couple beers and loses his balance and knocks the kid off the stool, falls on them, or even gets run into while he's standing? While these things can happen anywhere, things tend to end worse when booze is around, and it's the child that will pay the price.
The amount of fights I have seen in bars is also beyond count, and it doesn't matter what time of day you're there, because things happen. Is it worth it for a kid to be around that instead of just springing for a babysitter?
I don't have kids, but what I learned from my father about it is that when you do end up having them, they have to come first. You put their safety above everything else, and you don't do anything to jeopardize it.
I'd like to tell Mr. Gross that when he decided to have kids, he should have understood that his life wasn't going to be about what he wants anymore, but what his daughter needs — and what she doesn't need to be around is the kind of people like me who spend a lot of time at the local pub.
And if he wants some "adult contact"… join a book club.
http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/89085917_Defending_our_last_bastion.html
By Steve Janoski
Only in Brooklyn could the idea of bringing a baby inside a bar sound anywhere near a good idea — but that's what happening, according to Jessica Ravitz's recent article on CNN.com, "Brooklyn brewhaha: Babies in bars."
Ravitz chronicles the story of one Matt Gross, 35, an editor for the blog DadWagon and the columnist who writes the Frugal Traveler in the New York Times. He's also the stay-at-home father of a 14-month old daughter.
In the article, Gross says that he "longs for adult contact," and that though he has a child, he "doesn't want to be excluded from the adult world," so he brings his daughter with him to the bar.
The craze has apparently caught on in Brooklyn, where bar patrons are forced to put up with middle-aged adolescents who can't tear themselves away from the bottle for long enough to raise a kid.
My objections to this are multilayered. As a 25-year-old pub connoisseur, I am revolted by the idea of sitting in my neighborhood dive surrounded by children.
The guys I know go to bars to be out with other adults. We go to hit on women, or to commiserate about what said women have done to us. We tell stories about other nights drinking, laugh at crude jokes, and, depending on the night of the week and the amount imbibed, other things that the majority of society frowns on.
But it's OK. Why? Because that's our escape from the straight-laced job or the overbearing wife, and our last, great hiding place from the never-ending responsibilities that are heaped on us over the course of life.
Children, however, have the run of the country. Everything is about "the children" — some celebrity has a costume malfunction at the Super Bowl, and it's "What about the children!?" If an athlete gets arrested for some indiscretion, its always, "What does this tell the children!?"
Kids can go to any movie theater or restaurant, and other patrons are expected to put up with any kind of screaming fits or other baby issues they might have. And that's fine — this is the way it is.
But honestly, the bars? Have they no mercy or compassion for this last bastion of true adulthood? We who go to bars do not want to be surrounded by children and strollers and other reminders of either present or future responsibilities…we just want to have a beer after work or enjoy a Friday night.
And on top of that, what does it say about the fathers themselves, putting a little kid in harm's way at a bar because you "long for adult contact?"
Any place where alcohol is served en masse' is going to come with a certain degree of danger, and bars are known for being the place where you…well, get drunk. And when those people get drunk, they act in wholly different ways than they would otherwise.
Alcohol is involved in a good chunk of violent crimes — you don't often hear about the guy who drank too much Gatorade one night and decided to shoot his wife. Why put a little kid in the same spot where a lot of crimes start, and a good amount end?
The danger is not just from a lone drunken basket case, either. What happens if a guy has a couple beers and loses his balance and knocks the kid off the stool, falls on them, or even gets run into while he's standing? While these things can happen anywhere, things tend to end worse when booze is around, and it's the child that will pay the price.
The amount of fights I have seen in bars is also beyond count, and it doesn't matter what time of day you're there, because things happen. Is it worth it for a kid to be around that instead of just springing for a babysitter?
I don't have kids, but what I learned from my father about it is that when you do end up having them, they have to come first. You put their safety above everything else, and you don't do anything to jeopardize it.
I'd like to tell Mr. Gross that when he decided to have kids, he should have understood that his life wasn't going to be about what he wants anymore, but what his daughter needs — and what she doesn't need to be around is the kind of people like me who spend a lot of time at the local pub.
And if he wants some "adult contact"… join a book club.
http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/89085917_Defending_our_last_bastion.html
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