The Raging Elitist

When I was fifteen, during my sophomore year in high school, my best friend on the swim team quit. He apparently reached the conclusion that spending twenty-five hours a week at practice wasn’t worth it if he was never even going to be able to beat the likes of me, let alone the sea of athletes who were my superior. We didn’t keep in touch afterwards. My swimming friendships stayed at the pool, so when I happened across him over a year later, it was the first time I had seen him since he left the team. He was a quintessential good-looking guy – tall, well put together, bright blue eyes with pretty boy lashes – and when I asked him what he’d been doing since he dumped swimming, he told me with a superior smile, “Girls. Lots of girls.” Watching him roll his eyes in self-satisfaction, I was torn between envy and disgust. Lustful virgin that I was, I would have liked to have possessed the confidence to cross even once that magical threshold beyond which I imagined lay the pleasurable assuredness of one’s manhood, and here this boy had apparently crossed it many times over. I wondered at his ease and wished that I might have some of it for myself. On the other hand, I knew the way girls looked at him, and something about his casual air, the implication that he selected and discarded partners like playthings, that sexual conquest was what he did now in lieu of athletic training – it seemed slimy.

I don’t mean to claim that I was so high-minded that I wouldn’t have traded places with the grinning conqueror. More than my righteous disgust with his behavior, my own shame and fear of inadequacy kept me from “pumping up my numbers” during my youth. As much as I might have liked to, I could never quite bring myself to “date around.” I had one girlfriend in high school, who after a year and a half of heavy petting, dumped me. Then, I had one girlfriend in college, who guided me into manhood in the top bunk of her dorm room and spent the next three years arguing with me. After college, I had a few flings, one heated summer romance, one long-term relationship, and then, I met my wife. I lusted after many, but I did not have, as my swim team friend in high school put it, “lots of girls.”

I can’t regret what I’ll call my “limited history” too much. I ended up exactly where I wanted to be – married to a beautiful woman who loves me, the father to two bright young children – but looking back at the boy I used to be, the one grinding in the pool day in and day out neglecting his social life, the one too scared to talk to the girls he really liked, I feel sorry for him. Not that I would want him to be rolling his eyes and obscenely touting the myriad partners that he flippantly cast aside like playing cards (I’m glad not to have that on my conscience), I’d just like to see him a little less guarded with the opposite sex. Lord knows how much enjoyment he forsook.

Instead of chasing girls, I spent much of my childhood pursuing dreams of athletic glory – memorizing stats, talking sports with my friends, mixing it up on the basketball court during free period, and, of course, transforming my body into an aerobic machine in the swimming pool. There were many reasons I placed undue importance on sports, one of which was undoubtedly the subconscious notion that excellence in the arena would make me irresistible to the girls I admired. Imagine my chagrin when at the South Carolina Swimming State Championship Meet my junior year, I explained to a female swimmer in the warm down pool that “I won two events last night,” only to be told, “I’ve never heard of you.” So much for the spoils of victory. The pleasing glow of triumph hadn’t even lingered a full day. The night before I’d won two of the meet’s more grueling events, the 200 breaststroke and the 400 Individual Medley, within an hour of each other, the former going away, the latter in dramatic comeback fashion, and I was expecting something like, “That was you?” Instead, my accomplishments were invisible to this girl. After her humbling dismissal, she swam away indifferently, leaving me standing bemused and alone.

I never won a meaningful race again. I only had one more good meet in my career, and it was just over a month later. I didn’t know exactly how near the end I was standing in the warm down pool that morning, but it was beginning to dawn on me that I’d never be much more than a very good high school swimmer, a disappointment to be sure given my lofty ambitions and all the torturous training I’d endured in their name. Quitting about a year later brought a crushing sense of loss and failure, but somewhere deep in the recesses of my feeble teenage mind, I was awakening to the strange fact that the girls whom I meant to impress didn’t really care one way or the other about my success in the pool. A bitter consolation given all the effort I spent on swimming and the fact that I had no idea who I was without it.            

My children appear primed not to repeat my mistake of self-deprivation. It’s early to make a call regarding their interests, but the boys seem already to possess the good sense to understand that feats of athleticism are not the most efficient or effective way to a lady’s heart. For them, sports represent an occasional diversion, something to try here and there, a way to pass the time with some buddies – not something for which one ought to sacrifice or strive. When their sporty neighbor drops by in his cleats to find Cartter and Scotty with a group of friends “making Legos” on our den floor and asks, “Hey do you guys wanna play baseball?” they respond with a casual “Nah.” They have, you see, better things to do. Now, if the neighbor boy were to burst in on them and exclaim, “Guys! There are girls outside, and they wanna play with us!” I’m certain that a pause in Lego-making would be in order, and that a quick exit through the nearest door would ensue so that the situation with these girls could be properly assessed. Sports don’t rate the way girls do. Mastering a sport is a lot of tedious and exhausting work whereas the company of girls affords a much more instantaneous excitement; it is a reward in and of itself. We’ve forced the boys into plenty of athletic endeavors in their young lives. Girls, though? They seek them out on their own.

Scotty, the younger of the two, is the more comfortable with his relation to the opposite sex. Even at a mere six years of age, it’s plain to see that he has the gift. Pretty blue eyes, perfect facial symmetry, a slight, athletic build, he looks like a little boy band member. What’s more, he has an easy disposition and is quick to make friends; he has, if a 6-year-old can have such a thing, charisma, and the girls . . . they flock. In 4-year-old preschool, my wife Danyelle watched as a girl bubbled with laughter while Scotty draped his arm around her and told her jokes. After the chance encounter, the girl, a classmate, went home and asked her mother when she could meet Scotty again. In Kindergarten a girl kissed him. When I go out in public with him, I’m forever being startled by the urgent call of some young maiden eager for his attention. At the grocery, the neighborhood tennis club, the movies, the rec department – his fans are everywhere. They cry out in excitement at the sight of him, practically bursting with adoration and the desire to be noticed. “Hey, Scotty!” they say, beaming. For Scotty, coming home with a love note from a girl in class is nothing so unusual. He takes all the attention in stride and never gets overexcited. When Cartter teases him about a girl from school who has recently caught his eye, rather than protest, Scotty simply smirks and says nothing. I only pray the boy doesn’t grow reckless in his romantic endeavors. His enjoyment appears a foregone conclusion.

His older brother Cartter, though, has more of my innate sense of shame. A handsome blue-eyed, blond thing, timid, skinny with a bit of awkwardness to his frame and gait, 8-year-old Cartter’s interest in girls is just as strong as Scotty’s; he obviously admires quite a few young lassies, but he would never confess. In fact, part of the reason I’m so sure of his burning desire is the fervency with which he denies it. He claims that he’s going to marry his brother, that there’s “no such thing” as pretty or beautiful, and that he will never ever have a girlfriend. Whereas I foresee the need to preach caution to Scotty, I’ve long imagined that with Cartter, our father-son chats about women will have more to do with courage. Lately, though, I wonder if I might be underestimating the boy. Despite his professed disdain for girls and their ways, his exuberance in their company tells a different story. Actually, I’m already having to tell him to cool his jets.

When we went to see some friends at their home in Murrell’s Inlet on a recent Saturday afternoon, we arrived during the latter half of their younger daughter’s birthday party, and, walking around the little house and into the yawning expanse of their backyard, I was immediately surprised by the multitude of children present, all of them female. “That’s a lot of girls,” I thought. There were about twenty of them. The only other boy present belonged to our close friends who, like us, were in from out of town. Cartter and Scotty are well acquainted with this boy, and there was a giant bounce house located in one corner of the yard, so after a few hellos and the explosion of a pinata, I got to work drinking beer, talking to my friends, and forgetting about my children. Nearing the bottom of my second Mexican lager, the conversation with old friends was fully frictionless, and any thought as to the lopsided girl/boy ratio of the children’s party was totally absent from my mind. That’s when a hush fell over the adults, their small talk and storytelling drowned out by a chant rising up from the bounce house, weakly at first but rapidly increasing in volume and militant zeal. I tried to look as cool and casual as possible, ambling beer in hand toward the sound of twenty girls shouting in unison, “NO BOYS ALLOWED! NO BOYS ALLOWED!”

I shifted from one foot to the other, looking sheepishly around at the few mothers standing nearby. Unlike the 16-year-old girl in the warm down pool all those years ago, these women immediately recognized me: I was the boy dad who showed up halfway through the party, the guy whose kids had ignited this bounce house battle of the sexes. Like that 16-year-old girl, they were almost totally indifferent toward me. They offered polite smiles, declined to engage in conversation, and circumvented the spot where I stood with an ease that clearly expressed their disinterest, both in the events unfolding, and in my potential involvement. I’d like to say this dismissiveness was purely a relief. It was a relief to an extent, but part of me was still like the vain kid standing in the warm down pool, surprised that he wasn’t even a little impressive. Left alone with my ego, the proud declaration of my gender’s exclusion singing out from inside the jump castle, I questioned my boys’ ability to handle their own unimpressiveness. In particular, I feared my oldest son making a fool of himself.

Cartter had formed the little trio of boys into a covert unit that was conducting periodic raids on the girls, bursting into their midst and creating havoc before retreating to a corner of the yard where they could hatch their next plan of attack. With the chant emanating from the bounce house still in full force, I watched as Cartter huddled his posse together and directed. When an older girl with dark hair sashayed up within earshot of them, Cartter met her halfway, locked arms with her, and gave her a little shove. “Go away!” he warned. The gesture was playful, but heated, and it was all I could take. As the three banditos started to make their next move, I snuck around the back of the camper in the middle of the yard and hollered as discreetly as I could, “Cartter! Hey!” and motioned for him to come over. Of course, he hung his head in anticipation of a scolding as he approached. “Look at me,” I told him, and he lifted his chin to face me. I shook my finger toward him and said the only thing I could think of, “Just don’t push them.”

Brief instructions tend to be more effective with the kids at this early stage, and I was probably lucky to have mustered just those four syllables when I admonished Cartter. Maybe when he’s a teen, I’ll have a bit more to say. My hope is that I’ll be able to save him some of the embarrassment I feel when I look back at my own adolescence. My swim team friend might have behaved grotesquely in the way he replaced sports with girls, but it was a similarly shameful sense of entitlement that (mis)guided my belief that athletic glory could replace courtship. I could have used a lesson from my youngest son Scotty, that wee heartthrob, who recently wrote in an untitled composition (edited here for spelling and punctuation): “You’re not the best. Yeah. You’re not the best. I know you want to be the best. But you can’t. Just look around you. There’s other people out there. But you’re very special . . . So just be happy that you’re you. And remember you’re not the best. So be you. And I’ll be me.” The child’s confidence would appear to be undergirded by a powerful humility, exactly the quality my friend and I were lacking.

I’d like to believe I gave Cartter a touch of humility that day as the two of us hid behind my friends’ camper, and I shook my finger at him. As my sports-obsessed neighbor says, “Start ‘em early.” The boy seemed dejected enough in the moment. He didn’t argue. He just said, “Okay,” and cast his eyes sadly down toward the ground, awaiting his fate. Faced with the pitiable sight, I was again blessed with an absolute dearth of things to say, and could manage only a reciprocal, “Okay,” thereby releasing him back into the wilds of kiddom. Watching him turn his back to me and run his awkward run toward the bounce house, I was happy for him. The magical and forbidden threshold beyond which no boys are allowed beckoned, and Cartter was eager to heed the call. I returned to my beer and my friends, and, upon breaking through yet again into the inflatable fortress, Cartter bounced with utter glee while accompanied by girls . . . lots of girls.