I never really got into cigarettes.
But there were nights I smoked four or five, in windowless bars black as darkened movie theaters. Like Chez Nous in Phoenix, where some of us would drink and smoke Gauloises to show each other how dissolute and ironic we were as we tried not to snicker at the earnest polyester-suited gentleman playing a Yamaha PS-20 and warbling Tony Bennett songs while the water feature trickled down the rock walls behind us.
That was 25 years ago, and I've not thought much of cigarettes since. I guess I'm lucky; I've always been able to pick things up for a moment, weigh them in my hand, and put them back and move on.
My maternal grandfather had a tobacco farm and he died in his early 60s, having lived a decade with one lung. My paternal grandmother smoked four packs of Pall Malls a day; she died young too, looking terribly old. I always hated that my father smoked, which probably contributed to his dying at 47.
Still, I did it for the fashion. I would light up on stage so I could stuff the lit cigarette behind the nut of my guitar. I'd wake up in the morning with my mouth feeling like Jerry Garcia had camped there overnight. I wouldn't touch another cigarette for a month or two.
My point is we sometimes do stupid things because we want to. Because we feel bullet-proof. Or because we feel vulnerable.
Anyway, you're not going to stop your boys from playing football. And they're not going to stop playing. Even though we know what happens when you play long and hard enough.
Football is nearly as complicated as health care, and unless you spend hours every week breaking down tape and poring over playbooks, I'm disinclined to credit your purported expertise, even if you have had your hand in the dirt. Football coaches are probably the only ones who really understand football, and to do that they have to give up all hope of a reasonable off-field life. We ought to respect what they know about football, but we shouldn't for a moment pretend that there's anything intrinsically noble about what they do or that they have anything important to tell us about how we ought to live our lives.
(I don't know why anyone is surprised when one of these guys turns out to be just like everybody else. Of course some rich and powerful men misbehave; people generally do what they want to do when they think they can get away with it. And a lot of us who resist temptation do so because of worries about getting caught.)
Like most people who like football, I watch where the ball goes. I can appreciate athletic movement. But I also enjoy the violent collisions.
Only it's hard to watch the violence now that we have a clear idea about what's going to happen to these young men down the road. If you play enough football, you're going to develop problems with your brain. Which are substantially different than problems with your knees or shoulders. A little limp might become an older fellow, might seem to add a little character, to signify an interesting past.
But degenerative brain disease erases the person you were and substitutes someone angrier and more confused. It occludes reality. It makes you want to kill yourself.
Are we surprised? It's not like anyone ever thought getting kicked in the head was good for you. We all know about boxers, and how they suffer dementia. Only desperate poor people box. No upper-middle-class mom is going to allow her baby in the ring.
But football is different; it's been America's game for three or four decades. Kids are going to want to play; people are going to want to tailgate. So we're going to see people pushing back against reality, arguing that the evidence is flawed, that there's an anti-football conspiracy at work, that some people have a vested interest in what they're already calling the "wussification" of America. (And they're not entirely wrong about that; Americans like their creature comforts, we're getting fatter and softer and less intellectually rigorous.)
Soccer is worse, they'll say.
Football is safe, they'll say. You just have to use the right techniques and be careful with a kid who has suffered a concussion. Maybe start the kids out playing flag football, keep them out of pads until high school.
Maybe smoke a pack a day rather than four.
Football isn't going away. It's big business, it's ingrained in the culture. Too many kids want to wear those letter jackets and too many daddies want the vicarious thrills provided by the Friday night lights. It doesn't matter how rueful some of us may feel. Smoking hasn't gone away. Football won't go away either.
But that doesn't change the truth. There's a price for our diversion. We'll pay it.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 08/08/2017