Smart People Outsmarting Themselves

Since I published my previous blog I have done a lot of thinking. I will try to be smart about my thoughts.

I put myself on the IR. Due to my own cheapness and stupidity, with a slice of stubbornness thrown in. So I am taking the blame here. 

I tweaked my hamstring walking last Friday. I have tried twice to wear my running shoes for a normal 3 month period, since it is difficult to track my real daily mileage in the footwear. Both times I have been woefully unsuccessful at finding a point where I can comfortably switch to new Asics or Brooks shoes and not suffer an injury. 

Part of the reason for the injury is my being chintzy. We all know that running shoes aren’t the P.F. Flyers or Keds we grew up with. Nike didn’t become a multi-billion dollar industry with a magnificent campus in Beaverton, Oregon by catering to longevity in their products. In layman’s terms, sneakers ain’t cheap. 

Had I recalled my last brush with injury by trying to get every last mile out of my running shoes, I would have avoided this situation. Instead of four pairs of running shoes a year, I would have to buy six. $250 buys athletic tranquility and here’s that word again: longevity. 

That is enough to cringe over. What I did afterwards was further stupidity, with that touch of bullheadedness. 

Of course, when I felt the twinge, I didn’t stop the walk. Can’t do that, lest I don’t derive the full benefit of the workout, nor could I maintain that really good physical shape I had rounded into via exercise and diet. Gotta have those 10,000 steps a day. 

Go and elevate and ice the leg—not so fast. Aleve, Advil or Tylenol—nope; I had my booster shot coming on Tuesday and I worried that this could affect the results. I learned afterwards that taking Tylenol would have been fine. 

So I took most of the weekend off, walking a half mile on flat ground at a very slow pace on Sunday. That had been recommended by my Physical Therapist friend. 

Come Monday, I decide to walk a bit and go to the gym. The walking seemed to be okay. But near the end of my workout, I felt the twinge come back. Did I stop or did I complete the workout? I am a Sperber male, so the question is completely rhetorical. 

After my Moderna COVID booster on Tuesday, I walked a mile with just a small twinge. I should have rested, because the aftereffects of the shot floored me. At least it forced me to just do simple chores and cook on Wednesday, even if that involved some walking. 

I felt better on Thursday morning and walked 1.5 miles, then worked out in the basement with lighter weights and cords. Not good. Once more, I felt the uncomfortable feeling originating in the back of my upper R thigh. I completed my workout. 

On Friday, I dared to walk another 1.5 miles. Which I gutted out, as the pain came early into the walk. 

What have I learned? To stop walking. Which I will do. To elevate the leg and to ice it more often. And to contact a doctor on Monday for further evaluation.  

Nothing like taking seven days to figure this out, considering this is not my first rodeo with leg injuries. Especially considering that I graduated from a prestigious liberal arts college, went to law school and became a member of the New Jersey Bar. Which shows what native intelligence really does for allegedly inherently smart individuals.

Exhibit #2 is everybody’s favorite truth teller, Aaron Rodgers. The Green Bay Packers QB is set to return this Saturday from his COVID respite. Maybe a tad bit chastened, and certainly $14,000 poorer as the result of his stunt. 

Rodgers is smart. His football IQ is off of the charts. What he has fallen prey to is his intelligence burnishing his massive ego, while putting others at risk for infection and the serious consequences which could follow. 

I saw what the booster did to me—putting me in bed and giving me a 101.5 temperature as my body tried to adjust to the antibodies. From that snippet of interaction with COVID 19 in terms of its magnitude—and I am in very good shape—anyone who mistakes the severity of the consequences of an infection isn’t getting it right. 

When Rodgers went to an unsecured and unauthorized Halloween party knowingly unvaccinated, he abrogated the trust of his teammates. For which there were consequences, which included a loss at Kansas City to a surprisingly average Chiefs team. 

There are rules. And then there are rules for the others. Rodgers placed himself into that latter category based on his intellect and football acumen. Evidently the Green Bay brain trust made those other rules, in avoidance of clear NFL mandates and protocol, to assuage their disgruntled superstar. 

I would want to believe that these are very smart people. Yet collectively, what did they care about being smart? 

Thus I have little use for Rodgers and I won’t be rooting for the Packers to make the playoffs or go very far in them. Because they haven’t learned from their mistakes. I can identify with that.

Finally, the college basketball season tipped off this week. There were some good matchups—George Washington and Maryland played a close game—these teams should be regulars on each other’s schedule. Duke beat Kentucky and Kansas defeated Michigan State in battles of heavy weights. 

For every good offering, there were mismatches. Why did Princeton, a notoriously good Ivy League basketball school, or for that matter a notoriously great college, play Rutgers-Camden, a Division III school whose notoriety was once having had the longest college basketball losing streak at 117 games? Maybe a better opponent would have been Cal Tech, owners of a past 310 game SCIAC losing streak—the Tigers would not necessarily have been the smarter team on the court despite the lopsided score that would have eventuated. 

On the opposite side of the ledger were schools like Virginia, a pretty fair academic institution, inviting Navy to Charlottesville and losing. Arizona State, coached by Duke All-American Bobby Hurley, had UC-Riverside, not a national powerhouse, come to Scottsdale, where the visitors sank a game-winning 70 foot shot, shocking their hosts. UC-R is now ready to take on La Sierra (who?) In their home opener.

Even Rutgers, a legitimately good Big Ten team, looked to bring in a cupcake in Lehigh, picked to finish in the cellar of the Patriot League. RU escaped with a three point OT win.

All examples of smart people outsmarting themselves. When all they needed to do was get off on the right foot.