There wasn't much to watch, if you were from New England, during last night's Super Bowl, but the half time ads were something.
The one which struck the Phantom most was an ad showing a boy, maybe six, maybe eight, who was giving a pep talk to his stuffed animals, a talk he had clearly heard from an adult male who coached his youth football team. The ad was sponsored by the National Football League, a sort of recruitment piece, like the Army's "Be All You Can Be," ads.
"I am a monster! I am a beast!"
This prepubescent boy was telling himself, "I'm a monster! I'm a beast!"
He was performing a self stoking ritual of dominance.
He was parroting what he had heard from an adult male. A coach. He had been told about aspiration.
What struck the Phantom was how very prepubescent this boy was. Clearly, his muscles had not seen a lot of testosterone yet, nor his larynx either.
It made the Phantom think of how he had caught football fever as a six or seven year old, seeing football on TV and going out to a field with a boy, his only friend in the neighborhood who reliably wanted to throw and catch and run a football any time of the day. He would kick or pass the Phantom the ball, and the Phantom would run it at him, and he'd try to tackle the Phantom, and the Phantom did the same for him.
The difference between lamb and mutton is puberty and neither the Phantom nor his friend were powerful enough to do much harm.
Later, post puberty, the Phantom joined his high school's wrestling team, where they built strength by having the wrestlers pull themselves up a twenty-five foot rope to the ceiling of the gym, using no legs, only arms, hand over hand. Of course, all the boys pumped iron, lifted weights in the off season, building muscle mass and power.
Wrestling is a contact sport, and in fact it is constant contact, violent, scientific and fast. You cannot be successful as a wrestler without a modicum of muscular strength, although flexibility is probably more important, but aggressiveness, tolerance for pain and relentlessness are helpful.
One of the Phantom's sons started wrestling at age 7, which the Phantom did not encourage, but an adult--oh, those adults!--who wrestled in college, was organizing a wrestling club and he picked out this son. "He's got something to prove," he told the Phantom. That son proved to be a hundred times better wrestler than the Phantom ever was, in part because he was trained and drilled, from age 7, by someone who actually knew the science of wrestling.
Domination
"I really love destroying those super jacked [muscular] guys, who look so nasty," this 15 year old told the Phantom. "They step out on the mat with this smirk but I wipe that off their faces."
The Phantom remembered that feeling. After one wrestling season was over, the Phantom had to return to regular physical education class, and the unit he returned to was wrestling. The physical education teacher, not the brightest bulb, stood in the middle of the mat with his students sitting in a circle around him, and he announced that a well trained wrestler could take a bigger, stronger opponent because of his training.
He then told the Phantom to stand in the middle of the mat, and he pulled up Mack Shuff, a fearsome looking giant, who had a five o'clock shadow by 2 PM, a brow ridge of a Neanderthal, already balding at 17, and he was the defensive tackle on the football team, 220 pounds, well over six feet tall. The Phantom was 145 pounds, but he was a varsity wrestler.
Of course, the Phys Ed teacher was right about one thing-- training mattered--and the Phantom pinned poor Mack in fifteen seconds.
But what that teacher was too dim to consider is that drubbing might not be received cheerfully by Mack, who demanded a re match the next day. The Phantom could see immediately how much this meant to Mack, and it meant nothing to the Phantom, so he just rolled over and allowed Mack to win.
The Phantom, at that point, had nothing to prove.
The Phantom knew the truth, and likely so did Mack, so what was the point?
The fact is, the real athletes, the boys who were potent and trained, and who knew what real combat demanded, did not stalk around telling themselves they were monsters or beasts.
Another son did not wrestle, but he did white water kayaking. We lived hard by the Potomac River and this son spent summers at a camp run by members of the U.S. Olympic team and they quickly saw something in this kid, age 10--he could flip his kayak and pop it upright without using a paddle, something which usually takes adults many lessons over weeks to accomplish and many never can. Even using a paddle, it's not easy. But more amazing, he could do a "combat roll" which is to say he could go under and pop up in class 4 rapids.
The Phantom was not at all happy about this son's choice of sport. Wrestling was agonizing enough to have to watch, but you could easily die kayaking on the Potomac.
He expressly forbid his son to go off Great Falls, which is something 15 year old boys were daring each other to do, and people regularly died trying that, but, of course, one day the Phantom found on his desk a framed picture of his son doing exactly that.
Great Falls, Potomac River
Neither son ever strutted around the house barking, "I am a beast! I am a monster!"
They needed enough testosterone and likely the encouragement of their friends.
Now both sons have children of their own--both have daughters, no sons.
Watching these girls grow up, the Phantom is struck by how very different they are from little boys.
They rough house with their fathers and they are wonders to behold, but they are clearly not boys.
They never call out, "I am a monster!" or "I am a beast!"
