Take it to the hoop
I really love nurses. I guess, for the most part that's a fairly safe thing to say, unless of course you're a seven year old boy with an acute case of measles. But still, who
doesn't love nurses? You can pretty much add a nurse to
any story a guy can conjure up and it
will get the
full attention of those he's trying to tell it to.
The one I met recently exhibits all the finest qualities of Nurse-Dom: she's attractive, does great historical justice to the uniform and has that bedside manner we all crave.
And she's smart. Perhaps, too smart. In fact she may be one of the most intelligent people I have ever met.
It seems only logical that a nurse, with the potential to fatally wound another human being by improperly using a syringe, should actually
be smart but
... read more
Take it to the hoop
I really love nurses. I guess, for the most part that's a fairly safe thing to say, unless of course you're a seven year old boy with an acute case of measles. But still, who doesn't love nurses? You can pretty much add a nurse to any story a guy can conjure up and it will get the full attention of those he's trying to tell it to.
The one I met recently exhibits all the finest qualities of Nurse-Dom: she's attractive, does great historical justice to the uniform and has that bedside manner we all crave. And she's smart. Perhaps, too smart. In fact she may be one of the most intelligent people I have ever met.
It seems only logical that a nurse, with the potential to fatally wound another human being by improperly using a syringe, should actually be smart but this one came with innate abilities well beyond that. This woman is insightful. She sees things with a keen clinical eye, and forces you to look at things from a different perspective even though you didn't think there was a different perspective to actually be looking from. Yeah, that kind of smart.
With guys, we tend to think along a linear intellectual plane for the most part. We're "smart" in the same way lions rule The Serengeti, in an exclusionary top-of-the-food-chain sort of way.
A guy has this naturally protective tendency to keep delicate opinions or deeply-seated convictions he may have within the safety of a personally defined area - The Box, if you will. He tends to restrict any and all unnecessary lateral thinking to the area directly outside of The Box because frankly, he enjoys the logical nature, quiet comfort and inherent hierarchy The Box has to offer.
There are four simple rules of The Box:
(1) Be comfortable with The Box.
(2) Believe in The Box.
(3) Never challenge The Box.
(4) No one enters The Box.
Allowing individuals to pierce the sanctity of The Box is like asking dogs and cats to switch jobs. Doing so has cosmic implications that would make Mr. Spock's head explode.
And it all started so innocently. I mean, I had never intended to break sacred Rule #4. But I did.
First, you must know that this nurse is very much a girlie girl and, as far as an important quality you would look for when choosing a nurse, this would be pretty damn high on the list. And, while I'm not exactly the type to hunt down wild rabbits and devour them whole, I would very much consider myself a guy you could feel relatively safe to share a shower with (if evil aliens, for example, were forcing us for some nebulous reason to shower together). In the big picture I felt my uniquely-male perspective would enlighten her strongly-female bias in an I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours sort of way.
So much for that brilliant theory.
Since it was a fairly new relationship I felt it only appropriate to strategically mention my various athletic endeavors, spicing up our conversation with the occasional "yeah it hurts but that's just part of the game" kind of statement. Guys play rough, chicks dig scars, right? I figured, given our perspectives, she'd simply eat it up. Truth be known, I had actually played a little pick-up hockey the night before and sported some really sore ribs as definitive proof. Given the scenario, I fully expected (hoped) the nurse in her to jump to the fore, capitalize on this glorious opportunity and turn all Florence Nightingale on me, which she did - kind of - for about eight seconds.
"That can be a pretty dangerous sport with all that hitting and stuff.", she mentioned. "You have to be really careful."
"Yeah, I know, although the league I play is technically non-contact." I felt her maternally-protective nature growing exponentially. I felt a massage appearing on the horizon.
"But the mere fact you get hit isn't really a problem is it since that's kind of thing guys do, right?", she added. "I mean, it all boils down to the same basic equation, doesn't it?"
Sports, as a simple equation? I was intrigued. Please continue.
"It's all one big, testosterone-fueled phallic thing, isn't it?"
I suppose, If there was ever such thing as an obviously rhetorical question, one you could put down as the prime example in The Big Guidebook of Rhetorical Questions, this would be it. "Come on.. big man, put your ball in the hole or put your thing in the net or the goal or whatever you call that contraption. If that's not a sexual metaphor…"
She did have a point.
"It's all about scoring and putting something of yours into something of theirs, most times against their wishes, right? I mean, sports are what guys do when they can't have sex. Same dance, different direction. I'm not a sporty person but it doesn't take a genetic scientist to figure that one out."
No, just a really insightful nurse, it would appear.
And strangely, what she said did make sense.
I suppose, under her hypothesis, the first sport would have been something like golf with one pretty basic rule: you put a ball into a hole. Seems pretty straight forward. Not really much of a lyrical mystery to that one.
Then you have soccer, where the balls are bigger and shared by a larger group of men, and the net is also bigger which may mean a more daunting challenge or, in this context, an even easier one. Truth be told, freaking Stephen Hawking could score in a net that size, even without a great pickup line.
And there's football, which would have us collectively, as a team, carry our "ball" to the goal line where you may end up being the recipient of some pretty heavy petting (a field goal) or perhaps full satisfactory end zone penetration (that ever-elusive touchdown). I guess, to carry the concept even further, your teammates are like buddies in the bar who help you devise special "plays" to help you score. Sometimes it's about passing the ball ("come here often?"). Sometimes it's the relentlessly slow running game (flowers and a couple of bottles of Merlot?). And, on occasion, you go for broke with the alluring but horribly desperate Hail Mary ("look I'm dying and I have only four hours to live.") I can't even begin to contemplate the meaning and implications of "the old end around" in this context.
Baseball too, as Meatloaf has incessantly been telling us since 1977, is all about the scoring and seems to be the only sport that's completely and utterly honest about its sexual intentions (which, you have to think now, means Abner Doubleday was either the most sexually-frustrated person on the planet or one of the world's first players). Clearly, the lesson to be learned here is that your chances of scoring successfully in this particular game are based almost solely on your "team's" ability to execute the fundamentals. That means, kids, if you can't bunt (backrub) or pitch (great conversation) it's very likely you may risk leaving a couple (realistically millions) of your runners stranded.
As the pertinent examples began piling up it was becoming more and more obvious that:
(a) it really didn't matter what sport you held up to the Phallic Principle - the results were always the same.
(b) She was Einstein with better hair
(c) The Box was in flames.
Whether it was about throwing your rocks at the button, pointing your arrow to the bullseye or stuffing your ball into the hoop, the underlying intention of all sport would appear to be to put your thing into their thing after which you'd hoot, holler, high five your mates and watch the point total rise. In that sense, playing sports sounds a helluva lot like life at most colleges which is why, I guess, there's so many sports at college.
This brings us back to my original injured status. If these sore ribs had been acquired in my very male-oriented albeit somewhat vain attempt at getting some, even metaphorically, that's ultimately a good thing, right? If my physical prowess and virility is not simply limited to a bedroom or a kitchen counter, it says a lot about my incredible manhood doesn't it? And, if playing sports and driving to the net or going five hole or running the ball up the gut simply means I'm a man doing what real men do, that would make me pretty darn heterosexually vibrant wouldn't it?
"Wouldn't it?" I asked Yoda, the Overly-Inquisitive Jedi Nurse.
"Who said anything about sports being heterosexual?" she countered.
I really hate nurses.
END
