Admitting That You Lost A Step Is As Un-American As It Gets

Dan Regester9 years ago

Adolf Hitler once said “anyone can deal with victory. Only the mighty can bear defeat.” And if you’re a vegetarian with a superiority complex to overcompensate for your micro dong, failed art career, and crippling inability to spin a wooden top, all causing you to ruthlessly murder half of an entire sect of people, those words might resonate with you. But for the rest of us who refuse to restrict ourselves to the diet of a fucking rabbit, have some grade A beef hanging off them slightly to the left, think art is for pussies, and can ignite a Sherman-esque Atlanta bonfire with every throw of the dreidel, admitting failure just isn’t in our nature.

Budging even an inch and accepting you lost a step is going out like Der Führer: surrendering like a bitch, swallowing a cyanide capsule like a bitch, choking on your melting inner organs like a bitch, and looking for the nearest bullet to put in your head after failing to off yourself correctly… like a bitch. If you come to terms with your own mortality, you’re a Nazi. End of story. Instead, you should go down swinging, hang on to your former glory, talk a big game, and make countless excuses for when you don’t live up to your own delusional, self-promoted hype because that’s the American way.

Four years of perpetual drinking, sloppy, unprotected bone seshes, and late night Taco Bell runs takes its toll on an individual. There’s no disputing that. Sure, you might look stronger and better senior year than the string bean you once resembled when first arriving on campus thanks to your fraternity’s mandatory gym hours spent occupying a bench for forty minutes, doing five sets of five, and telling anyone who approaches that you’re not even close to being done, but Father Time is undefeated. No longer are you pointlessly running for eight hours in your high school hallways everyday during warmups of wrestling practice. In fact, you’re not running at all. You’re just popping some curls for the girls, bulking up those glamor muscles, and actually hindering any real sports ability you once possessed.

When that day comes — trust me, it will eventually come — and you get Space Jam‘d out of all your athleticism, stamina, and speed, reject any beliefs that you’re not as good as you once were because you’re still very much capable of a flash in the pan. The only difference now is it’s vital to emphasize those dwindling occurrences of success and suppress and justify the increasing losses.

Yeah, you went 3 for 37 during an intramural league game, but how about that circus reverse layup you pulled out of your ass halfway through the second quarter? That’s what will stick out in people’s minds, not the brick house you were laying the foundation to out on the court the rest of the game. Besides, you don’t have to put up with anyone’s shit. You could have played college ball after all. On the bench… Of a D3 school… That your uncle coached at. They’re lucky to have you. You’re a damn specimen and anyone that can’t see that is either an idiot or blind. Going out there and dropping 9 in a thirty-point blowout rocking a hangover that would kill a lesser man after your pledge brother’s 21st birthday was more heroic that the Michael Jordan flu game performance. Or, at the very least, comparable.

Coming to grips with the harsh reality of your declining physical state is settling, and frankly, offensive to all the men and women who gave up their lives for you to inhabit a country with the freedom to live in a state of self deception. So go out there thinking you can still run that 4.7 40 you clocked back in junior year of high school without stretching. Go up for that dunk during a fast break, and heave that pigskin 70 yards downfield against the wind. It’s your God-given American right to think you still have it..