Get Away

Going solo.  Going on my own.  A long time ago I learned to look over a situation before opening my mouth.  Walking alone.  Covered in emotions.  Rain falls. Talking to myself.  Talking to my dogs.  They look up at me but don’t make a sound. 

The background up ahead looks fuzzy.  Seems like a dream.  Days like this, they come and go.  I go days without speaking a word.  After years of talking to people that I didn’t give a shit about, and talking to women just to get in their pants, it’s a relief not to say a word.  But I have always been comfortable with silence.  Never found it awkward at all.  Sit in a room and stare out the window.  Sit in the woods and listen.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Words exhaust me.  Words exhaust me more than anything else.  Run all day.  Lift weights all day.  Hunt all day. Never speak.

Feelings that come on those rainy days; all of them upset me.  Feelings, and thoughts that I welcome, though.  Like an old friend returning.  I once heard a new age “guru” talk about how people are comfortable with their “pain body” and they like it.  These thoughts are my pain body, I guess. The place I go to is almost an excuse, but it is a comfortable place.

The beach has always done me good, especially when I am alone.

 

 I take the dogs to a secluded national seashore in Delaware and walk and drink beer and start a fire on the beach and go swimming, even in wintertime.  We just rush into the surf.  Fuck it, it’s like electric shock therapy and calms my head down from the thoughts that I can’t get rid of, and of course, the dogs love it.  And then we go back to a pet-friendly hotel and I shower and put on jeans and a flannel and my Buck knife in my boot and walk the half mile to eat at a dive bar where watermen and hunters and locals hang out.  I eat oysters and get drunk as hell and play Kris Kristofferson on the jukebox and when I get back into the room, the dogs are happy to see me.  I grab a pint of Evan Williams from the truck and we all go for a walk on the beach.   I take pulls from the bottle and the dogs romp and chase each other and I am very happy during these moments.  

It’s dark, man, dark as hell and the buoy lights blink from far off in the sea and I can see the amusement park lights from the resort town a few miles down the road.   It’s like we are in our little world and what else is there?  What else should there be?  Nothing.  No humans are allowed during these moments.  They just fuck everything up with their useless talk about nothing.  I will take these moments for my dogs, for myself, and for no one else.

Screwed

Oh, man. My buddy Steve has a Black Labrador puppy that he wants me to get. It's Rebel's nephew. Oh, man.  But do I want a puppy? Oh, I love them so much. Them romping around and learning all the new stuff. And I could compete with him and show those snooty dog people a thing or two.  They follow you around and get into trouble but not too bad, and they look so cute doing it. And how will Rebel be? He has a bad shoulder and I'm so worried about him. It may be his elbow. I have to take him for an x-ray and I'm thinking about what if he has surgery and what that would be like him having surgery and getting a new puppy and all. And I really need a new challenge, I really do. I don't know what I will do.

I was listening to two congressman talk today on a podcast and I am afraid that we are screwed, my fellow citizen. Basically, 99% of Washington doesn't have any idea nor do they care what we little people are going through. They just want to stay elected, says the congressmen. Groceries gone up? House blown away? Generations of lead in the water, runoff from coal companies in your water? Schools in disarray?  Crime out of control? Nobody cares, they just talk and go to parties where they raise money. The congressmen talked about raising money and how it is all about raising money to keep power and nothing more. We all suspected it and hell, we knew it, but to hear them say it gave me a feeling of doom in my very soul. How far we have fallen. I picture a Mom and/or Dad trying to live right, trying to work and make it and everything being more expensive and they can't seem to get ahead, and then I picture some congressman with his arm around some Big Food lobbyist laughing as they have martini's at a fancy Georgetown restaurant. And these people in DC ain't shit, most of them. Bunch of soft-ass freeloaders, bunch of sickos. Have they seen families all messed up from Fentanyl? Kids dead everywhere? No outrage, nothing. Screwed. 

On a happier note, I'm sitting in my back yard and about 6 ducks and ten geese just flew over. Rebel and I both looked up at them. I feel sorry for people in the city.

Don't Be Common and Kids All Messed Up

It seems that all I ever do is yearn for days gone by, or rather the way it was in the "old days". I guess that one would call that living in the past, but I can't help myself. The 70’s and 80’s were a great time to grow up. 

I feel sorry for my kids and their friends. I took my 12-year-old and his friends to a football game the other night and they sat in the back seat of my truck texting each other. And they were in the same vehicle. I guess it's just strange to me. 

The kids grow up fast today, but in a different way than I did. I had my first beer and cigarette in the third grade. Now they grow up fast by learning technology and seeing stuff that they shouldn't be seeing. 

 I was very concerned with fitting in with my sister's friends. She was 3 years older than me and I never wanted to be silly around them or to seem immature. There was an expression that everyone used where I grew up in Maryland, and that was, "Don't be common".  When you do something that's not cool or it's immature, that's called being common. My big fear was having one of my sister's friends call me common. Here is the definition that I just found "The quality of being common in the sense of vulgar, coarse or low class." Like farting in the car when everyone is in it. That's common. Or spitting on the sidewalk. I thought we made up the expression in Maryland.  Side note: I talk about Maryland a lot like its Valhalla. It used to be when I was growing up. The Eastern Shore is still cool and certain other parts. Now where I grew up is a shitty place. Crime and ugly. Sad.

Phones have changed a lot of things for kids. Today, kids have porn at their fingertips. No matter how hard parents try to block it, the kids can figure out how to see it. We had the Sears catalog women's underwear section and somebody's father's old Playboy. You had to have some serious imagination with the Sears catalog. I remember one kid had a ballpoint pen that when you twisted it, would have a girl take her clothes off.  Twist it up and she had clothes. Twist it down, no clothes. Popular kid. You know that seeing shit like our kids see at a young age is screwing their brains up forever. 

Writing this, I started thinking about my sister's friends. She had a boyfriend one time who liked to go hunting, so we used to go together. I was in my 20s at the time. Everyone called him "Ticket", and I'm not sure why.  He was around 5'8 and 125 pounds. Spindly, but I liked him. He was Southern Maryland to the core, crazy strong accent. Anyway, he had knee surgery and was on crutches. We were hunting public land in Maryland and there were a few duck blinds on the property but all were taken, so we were sitting back in the bushes hoping a duck would fly by. Ticket said that he would go see if any of the blinds were open. "Okay, I said, shoot in the air twice if one is open."  He hobbled away. 

Some time went by and we heard one shot and figured it wasn't Ticket, because I had told him to shoot twice. After a while, when Ticket never came back, I went looking for him.  I found him lying in the mud, unable to get up. "The blind is open," he said, looking up at me, his crutch sticking straight up in the air and his gun lying across his chest.  "I thought you were gonna shoot twice,"  I said. "What happened?" He said, "When I shot my shotgun, it knocked me on my ass and I couldn't get up out of the mud." I was thinking that he still could have shot again from lying on his back, but didn't say it, figuring that would piss him off. Later on, he took a crap in the woods and my Labrador went and rolled in it. Yes, it was nasty. 

Back to the kids. Kids today are all messed up and it's a big plan by the elites of the world to make them slaves to porn and technology and not realize that they are controlled by them all. Make the little boys hate being men and feed them shit in the food that feminizes them and makes them nice and docile so they can keep them in the basement while they take over even more than they have already taken over. Our government is full of people who hate you whether you think that they love your agenda or not. They are just fucking with you and robbing us blind and you are too stupid to realize it. But good luck with your dreams of a new world. You can't trust anyone who acts like they are "in charge" or with a title. You can't trust anyone except maybe your family and a few friends to really look out for you,  especially when money and power are involved. 

So to summarize, kids need to shoot guns and fight and stay out in the sun and chop wood and stay off them damn phones and look at the Sears catalog or a pen that takes off clothes when you twist it. 

Time With My Buddy

I went to the beach over Labor Day weekend with my 12 year old son, Max. We usually sneak away together once a summer. The wife has to work and the 18 year old has football, so Max and I either go away to Ocean City, Maryland or Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  We even did it in the winter one time. We went to Rehoboth this time. It's about 90 miles from where we live in South Jersey.

Traffic was pretty bad but not crazy and we got into town and went to one of those Iron Hill Brewery's because it was too early to check into the hotel. The service was amazingly bad, which seems to be par for the course these days except if: A) the waitress is over 40 with some wrinkles and a smoker's voice B) The waiter is an older man. Other than that, they are in no hurry to bring me my beer or even take the order for food. I always tell Max, as soon as she/he gets back to the table, we are gonna order everything all at once, drinks, appetizers and entree. Sometimes , if the service is real bad, I tell the server that  "I'm gonna drink this beer real fast, so feel free to bring me another one in a few minutes."  I learned that one from my buddy , Rick.  He'd say, "By the time you get back to the bar, I'll be finished with this, so just bring me another one right away." Those older lady servers are the best. They tell you their life stories and they are always interesting. Most likely they got screwed over by some man.  Hard luck stories but always a cheerful disposition.  The beers were very good , 9/10 and the food was a 5/10. 

The hotel was a good, one, Fairfield Suites. The front desk lady was so nice that I had to tell her that I appreciated her being so pleasant. I hope she doesn't read this, but we got into the elevator and I asked Max, "Is that a man?" and Max said, "No, she's just a really ugly woman." But she was damn nice, bless her heart. I feel bad writing that, but it's funny. We have a rule in our family that as long as it's funny, you can't get offended. 

We left there and went to the boardwalk but Max doesn't eat any junk food or snacks, just meals, so it pretty much sucked. He didn't want caramel popcorn , or ice cream or Thrasher's Fries. I didn't want to eat alone,  because it would make me look pretty bad when he was being all dedicated and shit. So we went into some t-shirt shops and in between,  I kept asking Max if he wanted some Funnel Cake and he was all like, "No, I'm good." So we went to Wawa and he got a beef bowl and 3 Molk's and a beef bowl for the morning. I grabbed 2 pretzels and actually felt guilty for doing it. 

The next morning, I did a podcast with Marty Gallagher and Max looked at his phone and then we went downstairs to the hotel gym. They had dumbells that went up to 50 pounds and we did db curls and pushups and then hammer curls and pushups. I told Max that he had to earn his time at the beach by training first, and he agreed. We were all pumped up and feeling good. It takes us about 3 minutes to get ready to go to the beach. More when women are around and 18 year old's. Max figured out how to pay for parking and we went on the beach. Pretty dead, not many people, which was fine with us. Max stayed in the water the whole time. I went in some but the waves were almost zero, so I didn't last long. Max got bit by some sea urchin right before we left. It was a bad rash and swelling fast. I acted all calm but I was thinking, WTF? It looked like one of those worm tracks in a worm farm but it was all red and then he started to break out in his chest. I got the first aid out of the truck and put some ointment on it and it started to go down. I could've put the wrong ointment on him and screwed it all up, but it got better.  He looked it up on his phone. Sea anemone, he said it was. 

That night, we met a buddy of mine, Larry and his family, at a barbeque place in Bethany Beach, Bethany Blues, two towns over. Larry and them are some great people. We used to work at Penn together. He lifts and he's from Maryland, so I like him. I had the crab cakes which were a disappointment , but as my 18 year old said, "Dad, it's Delaware, not Maryland. What did you expect?" True. We headed back to the room after another stop at Wawa for beef bowls for breakfast and a few more Molk's. The Phillies were playing and also college football was on so we switched back and forth.

The next morning,  we went into the hotel weight room again. This time it was support rows, pushups and flies. We went to Dewey Beach, the next town over to swim, hoping the waves were better down there, but they weren't. Max didn't get bit by anything this time, so I consider the outing a success. Lunch was beef taco's (excellent) and Lagunitas beers. 9/10 on both counts. Forgot the name of the place. We then drove down to Ocean City, Maryland, about a 30 minute drive, to walk the long boardwalk that's there.  We learned  real quick that Ocean City has gone to shit. It's dirty and everyone looks like shit and Max and I lasted about 10 minutes before we left. It's like someone ruined on pupose, it's so bad and it got bad fast.

Dinner was Buffalo Wild Wings (burger and a patty melt) and DogFish Head 60 Minute Draft and a Coors Light. There food is always good, beer too.  8/10.  Always good except that one time in Gastonia, North Carolina when it was pretty bad.

Phillies and College Football finished out the night. We awoke early the next day to head home. Of course, we had to stop at Wawa on our way of town. Beef bowl for Max and not even a pretzel for me.

Lean Times

There are some poor people out there. It really sucks to be poor.  I have to admit that I have been amazingly poor before.When I was a student assistant coach 30 years ago,  I remember writing in my diary to never, ever forget how poor I was at the time. I dated girls just to get food and beer. Shallow, I know. But this one girl would bring me a sub sandwich (hoagie) every night, with a 6 pack of Coors Light. I liked her very much. She was nuts, but so was I. It was a perfect match. Man, I have some stories from those days, but I have to put them into a fiction book to protect the innocent. My buddy Larry told me one time, "You are always an inch away from being in jail." He exaggerates. But I was poor. I used to wear winter jackets into supermarkets and slide dip cans up the sleeves. I ate a lot of hot dogs with chili on them, because they were 4 hot dogs for a dollar. I loaded them up.

 The most that I made as a graduate assistant coach with 4 years experience as a strength and defensive line coach and being in charge of all the cutting and painting the practice and game fields was $520.00 a month. I'd buy a Penthouse and a 12 pack of cheap beer after I'd get paid. Every time.  That was my treat to myself. Then I'd buy a few groceries, like pasta and bagels and tuna and pay rent and phone and water and electricity. That was it. Everything was gone then. I'd sneak in the cafeteria. I delivered pizzas. I cleared land.  I depended on the kindness of women. And my friends who were married always bought the beer. They were on WIC, which is food stamps for milk and bread and cheese. My one coaching buddy was on it. Married, making minimum wage just to coach. He's now a wining head coach at a Division 2 school and has been for years. We loved it so much. We all loved it so much. Coaching is like a sickness, sometimes. We would do anything to coach. The funny thing is that if you ask us all if we were happy, we would all say yes. You appreciated things.   

Not sure what the moral is here. Maybe it's that when you work like we worked for so little money for so long that it really shows how much you loved something.

Saturday Morning

Saturday, 10 AM, Bucks Bar and Grill

I got up early today, lifted weights, worked with the dog a little and then I came here. I woke up pissed off and I thought that lifting weights would get it out of me like it usually does, but not this time. 

I'm sure that you have been there before, when everything from the coffee maker taking too long to brew, to the lawnmower not starting, to the refrigerator dinging when you left it open too long gets on your very last nerve. You think about punching the refrigerator, but decide against it. You have done stupid stuff like that before. You are older now, wiser.

I decide to go to Buck's instead.

I put a few songs on the jukebox, some Haggard, Chris Knight, and of course, Hank. I take a stool way back in the corner. Just felt the need to sit in a dark, cool bar, to have a beer and watch some games for a few hours. I don't give a shit if anyone thinks it's too early to drink or not. 

In fact, I only give a fuck about a few things in this world, and what people think ain’t one of them. I stare at the the neon Budweiser sign behind the bar as it blinks and begins to fizzle out. 

Something wrong with your sign there, I say

Snake the bartender says, Yup, been that way for awhile.

Ever thought of fixing it?

No, I reckon I haven't. I nod my head.

And that was that. And I thought to myself, why did I just have a conversation about a beer sign? Seems like some wasted words that I can't get back.

In walks Johnny Twiz. I don't know his real last name . He ate a bunch of Twizzlers all the time when he was in high school so that became his nickname. So he walks into the bar. I guess that Johnny is around six foot two and two fifty. Has some fat on him, but a big dude. Big bully in high school and 20 years later, still a bully. He always wanted to fight me for some reason, at least that's what I heard. Kick my ass and make a name for himself. Always telling people how I am not so tough. Just noises coming out of a hole in his big dumb head.

I avoid shit like that all the time, just not worth the trouble with the law and all. But this morning I was not in the mood. He walks over to me, sits down, orders some pussy craft beer. I have never liked the guy.

How are you doing, Superstar?

Good, just trying to drink my beer.

So you want to be left alone?

Yep, that'd be great. Leave me alone.

Damn, ain't you uppity.

Not uppity, just sitting here by myself. I emphasized the by myself part. 

No reason to be a dick.

Well if you would leave me alone, I wouldn't be a dick to you, now would I?

I think you need your ass kicked.

Now I knew that this guy was half crazy, but I had been stuffing my crazy side way down inside of me for a long time and I could feel it bubbling to the surface.

I’d leave me alone if I were you

Then he stood up and pushed me. And my Budweiser spilled on the barroom counter.

Hee hee you spilled your beer.

I guess I did.

He was standing there with a dumbass smile on his face, pointing at me and laughing at me as Snake began to clean the beer off of the bar. I stood up and punched him with a straight right hand as hard as I could, right on the chin. Motherfucker dropped to his knees. Best punch that I have thrown. I couldn't help myself. I lifted up his chin and hit him again. This time he fell flat on his back and was out cold. 

I looked back at the bartender and he said

He's an asshole. I didn't see nothin.

Thanks, Snake

Better get going, Slim. 

I am , buddy. 

Don't worry about the tab, I got it. What a punch!

Thanks, brother, and I appreciate it.

I put a 20 on the bar as a tip for Snake.

On the way out, I nodded to a few of the regulars. I felt better now.

Today

After I dropped my son off at school this morning, I began to make my way to my friend Steve's farm to take my dog, Rebel, swimming. It's a 25-minute drive from my son's school to the farm. It's worth it. Rebel has been limping around lately and swimming seems to help his joints. Plus, I need to wear him out a little, he has tons of energy and if he doesn't do something to get a little tired, he drives me crazy all day.

I have to stay on Route 40 for a few miles before I get off onto Road 279 which takes me into the country towards the farm. 

I pass by stores and cheap food places and old motels on Route 40, some that have signs that warn of drug activity on the premises and that the area is under observation by the police department. I drive by one motel, one of those where you can stay for a night or a week or longer. I see a little boy standing in the parking lot of the motel in his school clothes. 

I figure he is around 8 years old, give or take. He's got his book bag on, he's dressed neatly, with shorts on and a collared shirt, and his hair is combed and parted on the side.  He looks like he is waiting on the bus to pick him up in the motel parking lot. A woman is there with him, holding a baby on her chest. I assume she is his mother. I feel so sorry for the boy standing in this dirty motel parking lot; my heart just breaks for him. 

My assumption is that the mother is on drugs and that they are almost homeless and then I say to myself, you don't have any idea what they have gone through or are going through in life. Maybe she works very hard and can't make it right now with the economy getting worse every day.

Or maybe she can't afford a house to rent and the motel is cheap and that's the best she can do for now. Maybe the father of the kids left them high and dry and left that little boy and that baby and the mother to fend for themselves. And I feel guilty about just driving by and then down the road a bit I feel like I should turn around and give them the 20 dollars that's in my pocket. But I don't. I reckon it's better to not get involved. I think to myself that everyone is so crazy today that it's best to keep driving by. And then I think what a shame that is, that you have to hesitate to help someone these days. I just get really sad about everything. I start thinking about that little boy's life and what he has to look forward to everyday, he goes to school and then the kids make fun of him because he lives in a motel and when he finishes the school day and takes the bus back to the parking lot with the old broken down looking El Camino sitting in it and his mother meets him and the boy is hungry but there is no going to the store for groceries, its McDonald's again, a cheeseburger combo meal just like yesterday. And the baby cries and cries for more food and the boy sits there with his combo meal and watches TV and he makes the best of it. After all, maybe this motel life is all that he knows.

I turn onto Route 279 and I am into the country. It's like time has stopped here. I drive with Rebel sticking his head out the window, on the twisting roads, past farms with cows and freshly planted crops. There are some houses on the road, a group of 3 or 4 every few miles. The houses sit off of the main road by 20 yards or so. Some have kids with their mothers siting in cars at the end of their driveways, waiting on the school bus. One mother has on pajamas and slippers and sits in an old Toyota Camry, looking at here phone. Her daughter sits at an old fruit stand bench, one of those fruit stands where the fruit sits out there and you leave money and take what you paid for.

Every few minutes, I see a picture in my mind of that boy in the parking lot. I can't seem to shake it.

As I drive, I see old barns half way caved in and old cinder block buildings with no roof. An Amish horse and buggy pass me going the other way, driven by two teenage boys. And then another Amish buggy drives by. This area has plenty of Amish folks. There is an Amish schoolhouse that I see all of the time, with a place for horses to be tied up outside of it. I see the children playing, always happy, always running and having fun. The schoolhouse is not far from where I hunt geese and sometimes, if the wind is right, I can hear the children screaming and laughing as they play outside while I am hunting. The other day on the same road, I saw an Amish man with a horse and plow tilling the field. He was struggling mightily with the plow, trying to keep it straight. 

I turn onto the road where the farm is and Rebel is jumping around in the back seat of my truck, excited to swim. After 30 minutes of retrieving in the water, I tell Rebel to jump onto the bed of the truck. I towel him off and put a solution in his ears that staves off ear infections.  He doesn't like it, but he tolerates it. Maybe he knows that it's all part of the process, because we do the same thing every time that he goes swimming. 

Rebel loads up in the truck and we head down the road. I stop at High's Dairy Store to get gas for the truck, a cup of coffee for me and a dog bone for Rebel. There are two girls in their twenties in there, both in pajamas. There is also a middle-aged woman buying crab pretzels and an old man wearing denim overalls, buying a can of snuff. 

I'm thinking that tomorrow I will bring my fishing rod to the pond. Rebel doesn't deserve to have all the fun. 

I wonder if I will see that little boy again?

Dreams

 I'm constantly seeking to be away from others and out in the country. Not all together away from others, but pretty far.  Far enough where I have to make a concerted effort to be around other people. I drive 30 minutes to the gym because I like the people there. And I like the parents on my son's baseball team and I see my old friends from where I used to work once every 6 months or so. But all of that could still be done if I lived further out in the country than I do. Everybody thinks that New Jersey is nothing but smokestacks and the Sopranos but South Jersey, near the Delaware Memorial Bridge, is a lot of farms and woods. I live about 2 minutes from a road that goes through nothing but farms and woods. I drive that way multiple times a day and I see deer and turkey and geese and foxes and eagles.  And Rebel sticks his head out the window and he's sniffing the country air. I have a nice setup where I live: A creek in my backyard where I can hunt and fish on 5 acres. But I want 1,000 acres.  I want a 500-yard-long driveway,  I want to be so far out there and have so much land that you can have a cabin along with the main house. And along a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, with tons of fish ducks, and geese. I'll lease out the fields to some local farmers to plant corn and soybean or whatever, but I want a sunflower field so I can dove hunt it. And I'll grow huge deer and only kill the older deer and live off the deer meat. I'll chop down trees and split the wood and heat my cabin and house with the wood  (My family is around somewhere in this but let's not ruin it). And I'll live in the cabin during hunting season and in the main house with the pond for swimming and fishing in front of it in the summer . I'll have a big fence with one of those huge gates with some cool name like "Whack and Stack 'em Ranch" or something similar.  Something with Steel in it may be better. I'll have a big jacked-up Tundra or F-150 or any full-size truck and me and Rebel will ride around in the evenings to look at the property and see the wildlife. Now, that's what I want, that's perfect.

Stuff

You know what I hate? I hate "jargon". Or maybe it isn't jargon, it's all the abbreviations and stuff like that, or maybe it is all the colloquialisms which Wikipedia defines as "the form of language that speakers typically use when they are relaxed and not especially self-conscious. Other examples of colloquial usage in English include contractions or profanity." 

That's it. Maybe all of them combined. I hate when companies shorten their names to make them more catchy, "Nat Geo" for example. "IHOP" "Dunkin' " there are tons more. "KFC", for example.  People shorten the name themselves like "Mickey D's"

Ugh. I hate 24/7 365, expressions like, "No worries" and "chillin' " 

Shit, it's not just that stuff. I hate a bunch of stuff. Straws, visors, jewelry on men, cats, little dogs except for those cool terrier dogs that kill stuff, little league coaches who think they are MLB coaches,  any type of cheering whatsoever, the expression "Let's Go! "2 wheel drive trucks, all politicians except one, people who change for a spouse, commercials, gun control, corruption, rap country, double standards, mean grocery clerks, Emu and Ostriches, Willy Wonka (the little people freaked me out as a kid. I was crying so hard that we had to leave the theater. And that's why I didn't watch Game of Thrones), waitresses/bartenders who take forever to get a beer, strength coaches who don't lift weights, football coaches who never played football, whiners, complainers (what I'm doing now), fake laughs, any type of celebrations except a pat on the ass, tripods in the gym, 

Can't stand when football coaches say "Good job two-seven" instead of saying, "Good job, twenty-seven." Say the number. It's not shorter to do it that way, just dumber.

I watched some of the UFL, and it was pretty good. I liked it. I didn't see a lot of dancing. I watched about a quarter. The NFL is becoming really weird, man. Right? I mean, Dick Butkus is rolling over in his grave right now with all of the woke bullshit, and for what? What's the endgame here for the NFL? Don't they get that their players are all this close to killing someone? The powers that be want that stuff but they really don't want them to hit that hard or stay inbounds like Walter Payton did.

I wonder if there is something to the lack of hitting in football practice these days and the preponderance of injuries. Is there a "hardening" factor that occurs from being hit more often, similar to a Muay Thai fighter's shins hardening? Interesting, right? I know that you have to balance hitting with head injuries, but it does give one pause to think about it. If the coaches won't hit in practice, I'd say that the players need to do some Muay Thai to harden up their bodies. They don't need to spar but have their Thai pad holder hit them with the pads during rounds. Sounds crazy, but I bet it would help.

I can't figure out why any football player or any athlete for that matter does not take Muay Thai lessons to improve their athleticism. It's a no-brainer. Hand-eye coordination,  balance, tracking a target, reflexes, conditioning, and a whole lot more.

You know what else? Duck Dynasty is the best family show, and probably the only family show on TV. No toilet humor, no sexual innuendos . I'm no prude at all, but you get tired of that shit after a while.