Archive for December, 2007

We went to Zippy’s yesterday for breakfast, mostly because I really, really wanted to go (I wanted pancakes! So sue me!) and I kept badgering Toby until he took me.

While there, some old guy sitting across the room from me kept glaring at me.

Did he think I was immature? (I was coloring on the baby’s menu when I first noticed him.) Did he think I was a bad mother? (Toby had taken the baby off somewhere because he was screaming his head off.) Was he disgusted by my attire? (Ratty old t-shirt and jeans… mmm…) Did he think I was yet another annoying tourist destroying the island? Was he racist? Do I eat funny or something?

…Was he staring at someone directly behind me? (Although there was a big partition behind me…) Did he have a lazy eye that made it only LOOK like he was glaring at me when in fact he was glaring at the person sitting across from him?

It made me self-conscious. Old guys are scary….

I went to a unique high school. There were a number of philosophies that made up my school’s program, some of which I didn’t agree with (such as not offering honors or gifted classes because everyone is supposed to have the same capacity for learning), but many that I did.

One of those I agreed with was the attitude towards football.

Football was not offered at my high school. As one of the most expensive sports, it tends to cause schools to funnel more money into it, often neglecting other areas (like, you know, repairs). Because so much money is poured into it, it causes a hierarchy to form— the football players and the cheerleaders become the top of the food chain, causing a number of social inequalities further down the line.

This view was something I really appreciated, after having come from a football-centric middle school. More than half of my middle school’s yearbook was dedicated to sports, with football being the main focus of that section. There was a very clear hierarchy, and I was at the bottom. I hated it. The school was full of bats and mold, but darn it, we gotta have our football!

My college is that way, it seems. Although it’s hard to have a true “hierarchy” with so many students, the school definitely spends too much on football, and the rest of the college suffers for it. Every time I check the news, about half of the articles are about the football team. People talking about how great having a winning football team is for the economy. Perhaps. People are buying football paraphernalia left and right, so I can see how that might be a benefit. But the school has several buildings that are old and need to be repaired. And recently, part of the campus was rented for a weekend event, with the renters saying they wanted the money to go towards updating the recreation center. (It’s far too small for the number of students here, and there are always at least a couple of exercise machines broken at any given time. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them get repaired before.) That money went, instead, to athletic scholarships. Oy.

In short, I hate football. I hate what it does to schools and wish that people would get their priorities straight and spend the money where it should be spent, instead of wasting it on athletes.

Yes, yes. Hate me if you wish.