I was thinking today, while doing my barbell clean/overhead press reps,
<record scratch> Wait, what?
Ok so here’s the thing. A lot of people hit there 30s and figure out they should ‘get into’ certain things – healthy eating, mountain biking, pottery, running, you know the types – and people call this a mid-life discovery, crisis if it’s a car, etc.
But what I was thinking, between the presses and lifts at the fitness studio I’ve been going to now for 3+ years, is about how sometimes it’s not about the hobbies we pick up along the way, but the ones we should have had in the first place.
But we never got to see that side of the menu.
My hunch is this affected pre-internet kids in a major way because for those of us who grew up in the 80s-90s framework, stereotypes were very very very en vogue. Sure, they always were, but the thing is, there was so much TV and movies and magazines and books and toys being consumed that banked on built-in societal frameworks, and so it was more of a no-go to break out of them and choose a la cart… So we got access to our section of the menu, and if you were a salad girl, you could choose from the salad section. But don’t be looking at the burgers. If you were a soda guy, that was it, don’t be veering off to the coffee.
As a kid, I just wasn’t offered sports. Art classes, writing classes, books – I was ‘that menu’. And while it’s likely I wouldn’t have taken to sports anyway, I felt locked out. But, the menu… in the end it amounted to a shrug and more sketching in notebooks.
As a high schooler, I might have taken to the idea of fitness, if it were on the menu. Between crash diets and waif how-tos, magazines didn’t signal I could strive for visible muscles – that was for athletic girls with swim caps and Speedos in a specific section of occasional feature articles – so instead of building them, I just silently enjoyed the fact that, of all things, my arms looked naturally cut, and I could pass for fit, and that was that. (An extra shame because the only thing I remember from high school gym class was having to do 50 pushups to get a final grade and learning how to feel for breast cancer.)
At some point in college I was strolling through an extracurricular clubs fair and stumbled over to an RPG stand manned by two… well, young men. My education in stereotypes told me I was not supposed to be there; I was nerdy in a ‘that girl’ way but not in a… that girl way. The menu had never offered me D&D in the 80s and 90s; I didn’t even know that section existed for any girls, not even nerdy ones. So after politely smiling at the guys explaining to me what they do on weekends, I walked away.
Fast forward to the last decade -> an ankle injury converted me into a person who power lifts, a friend with 90s access introduced me to D&D and, no, I’m not into sports but in my teens, I was bewildered to find myself taking a summer job as a sports counselor because it was the only position left to fill and I actually had a blast.
Why wait?
My takeaway is not to bring that instinctual limited menu to our kids, or ourselves. I think generationally and because of the internet, we’re much more open to keeping things open. Exposure (and yes, over-exposure) is very 21st century. Packaged well, that’s a menu we can easily offer – and take ourselves up on at any age.
“I don’t need you to be perfect, only that you’ll be present.”
Whadya got: