What Ever Happened To […] #1034

[Good Mourning. Everybody broke? Has Uncle Sam taken his hands out of your pockets yet? How about your state’s taxing paws? Here in Illy-noise, we have a legislature that: long ago promised lottery money would go towards education, tollway revenues would fix all the roads, and more recently claimed that the state is suddenly too poor to continue paying most public service people’s pensions. That includes teachers, of whom I have a personal, intimate working knowledge. THEN, boom: Just after Tax Day our beloved statehouse suddenly has $100,000,000.00 extra for building an Obama Library. Meanwhile, Illy-noise’s education is at the bottom of the heap; Illy-noise’s roads are a joke; and teachers, firefighters, etc., etc., etc. have already lost out on their pensioned cost-of-living increases.

[My gosh, it’s enough to make me wanna move to Puerto Rico. Are there any ultramarathons in Puerto Rico? Anyway, nearly everyone this week IS broke, which just naturally (ha ha) brings up this week’s topic.]

Deerly Beholden in Cripes, amen! Hallelujah! For today’s sermon we shall take for our text those wizened words of our friend Dr. Lisa Bliss, at the very spoke of the wheel in Spokane, who asks:

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO [mentoring; or, more specifically, mentoring free of charge] ?

For yea, woe yea, it seems even the money-grubbing “good example” being set for us by our federal and state governments is being picked up on by COACHES! No, friends, not those operating as busses or trains or the hindquarters of airplanes. No, these are the newly unearthed pseudo “athletic champions” who are lately starting to fill their wallets with what other oh-so-needy peeps are willing to pull out of theirs.

Paying for advice? No, paying big bucks for painfully obvious advice! Billed in 15-minute increments! Like attorneys. But at least with attorneys, you get legalese you can’t understand–but which *can* sometimes keep you out of prison or litigation or help settle a lawsuit that you might not otherwise be able to accomplish by yourself. With coaches, however, you get: “Today’s training is intervals and fartleks. Do it ’til ya drop. That’ll be 40-dollars-per-hour in advance, please. And if you’d like me to show up and watch you, you must pay my airfare and all travel expenses.”

“Pace you thru an ultramarathon?” they ask on their blogspots and Facebook pages. “Just a minute. My calculator doesn’t compute that high.”

Our friend Lisa wrote: “My point was, what ever happened to good ol’ ultra mentoring? The free get-what-you-pay-for advice while running together (if you could keep up). It’s the way I grew up. It’s how I’m sure you grew up. It’s how I learned everything I know. I didn’t pay someone to tell me to wear socks or drink water.”

Ow indeed, my flock. O My Gracious and O My Goodness. Are peeps this silly–or that needy–that THIS is what they’re willing to pay for today???

“What shoes do I buy?” (Two that fit.) “Socks?” (Yes.) “Shorts?” (Yes, except when you’re freezing.) “Jogbra?” (Yes.) “Jock strap?” (Sure, except if you’re female.) “Clothing?” (No. Today we run naked.)

My friends, I ask you: To what Nth degree of hand-holding do grown-up kids today require assistance before they can actually trot down a sidewalk by themselves? What? Have they never learned anything on their own? Figured nothing out by themselves? Never put on a pair of sneakers and RUN where the sheriff can’t chase them? Like normal kids? Like, um, how WE learned how to run???

Methinks today’s kids all grew up in playpens in front of high-def television sets, and not the mean hardscrabble streets of lily-pure suburbia. Playpens paid for by grandma, or guilt-ridden parents who only wanted “what’s best for the children.” Who, incredibly, only wanted what they said they didn’t have, growing up on the hardscrabble streets of suburbia. When, actually, those parents had everything! And if they didn’t have something, they mowed lawns or babysat until they could afford to buy it themselves!

This taught self-reliance, ingenuity, and major survival skills for, during, and after the nuclear holocaust. We learned how to run, by golly, by RUNNING! And later on when youngsters came along and wanted to run with us, we let ’em. We talked to them. During longer runs we posed such questions as how to prove mathematical theorems, what they thought of “string theory,” and how’s their sex life?

We taught ’em how to walk uphill and zoom down. We explained eating and drinking on the fly. We fairly brainwashed their asses with the “leave no trace” mentality. We made their asses THINK, not sit. And this was a major source of discovery for most of them, and hours of entertainment for the rest of us. And we ALL had a good time and nobody billed anybody for it either–in (ha ha ha) quarter-hour increments.

What was it that P. T. Barnum used to say? “There’s a sucker born every minute”?

Yes, and now all of a sudden there are these otherwise unemployable fitness Nazis aiming to cash in on all the universal mollycoddling of Generation Z. Those little ones who’ve emerged from the playpens not too long ago with their eyes wide shut and hands outstretched, palms up. “Gimme!”

“I can’t lace my shoes, show me!”

“I can’t eat chews and suck tubes at the same time, teach me!”

“I can’t run a marathon, lead me!”

“If I can sell my family on excessive Psoriasis contributions, can I run Boston?”

“RUN FIFTY MILES? ALL ALONE?? R U kidn? ROTFLMFAO!!!”

Right you are, my precocious ultra-dependent little geniuses, you can’t possibly do this. You need a COACH! And it’s gonna cost ya plenty! Better get another handout from mommy or poopsie.

But here’s the kicker: Where ever do you suppose these coaches learned all THEIR stuff?

Wrong.

Not from other coaches at $40-per plus meals and travel, billed in 15-minute intervals. Oh no. Your running coach learned it from a running mentor, while trying to keep up.

So, what ever happened to… mentoring? For free!!!

( O_O )

Yours troubly,

The Troubadour
“your LMAO 800-year-old lute-plucking choir sermonizer who suddenly wants to teach *you* the lute, at $40/hour + travel + meals + concert hall tickets, billed in TEN minute increments in advance”

Yankee Folly of the Day:
Illinoisans want Hawaii to pay for a change. And whudda ya wanna bet, not a single book will ever be checked out of the Obama Presidential Library?