We meet every month for a meal at the Curmudgeon Hotel.
We are all men of a certain age, silver haired, distinguished in our own eyes and pompously prejudiced. We take it in turns to sound off about our own selfish certainties while we eat something deep fried with a small side salad as the antidote.
Terry’s hobby-horse is smoking. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and a cigar on special occasions such as anyone’s birthday, death, anniversary, graduation or public holiday. Any occasion really. He rigorously rejects the health warnings of his doctor, his family and his cigarette packets. He bases his certainty of living a long life on one irrefutable fact. He tells everyone repeatedly that his father smoked like a chimney all his life and died at a ripe old age – not from respiratory disease but from being hit by a bus on his way to the pub.
“Just shows to go you that buses should be banned, not smoking” proclaimed Terry.
“You’re cherry picking the evidence” said Conrad who loves a good exchange of ill-considered preconceptions.
“Cherry picking?” grumbles Terry. “Too dangerous. I once heard about someone who choked to death on a cherry pip. My advice is to never touch the things. Personally I haven’t eaten any fruit since 1996. Too risky.”
Keith started on his own particular pet prejudice: electric vehicles.
“The general public” (of which Keith is apparently not a member) “has no idea of the dangers of electric vehicles” Keith boomed with the gravity of Churchill.
“I once saw an Internet video of one catching fire. Think about it. As a result of the fire, the battery and wires were exposed and people were probably electrocuted. No one’s ever been electrocuted by a petrol tank catching fire” he concluded triumphantly. There was a muffled chorus of muttered agreement and puzzled confusion from around the table.
Donald breeds American pit bull terriers. His mission in life is to promote the breed’s popularity.
“Pit bulls are the most affectionate dogs you can own” said Don.
“The only danger is that they may lick you to death.”
I coughed and mentioned the lawsuits brought against Donald for allowing his dangerous dog to maul moggies, dispatch daschunds and gobble guinea pigs. In response, he rounded on the victims.
“What earthly use is an animal that can’t defend itself?” he growled aggressively.
“It’s a hard world out there. I didn’t get to where I am in life by smelling the roses. Survival of the fittest is my motto.”
We all nodded, not in agreement, but just hoping that Donald would stop so we could start our own tirade.
“I nearly knocked over a cyclist when I was driving here” said Colin, warming up to his pet hate.
“In my humble opinion, as a driver for many decades, if people can’t afford to buy a car, they should stay off the roads.”
“How would they get around?” queried Claude.
“Walk. Or crawl. Hop if they want to. We motorists pay for the roads through all those fuel and vehicle taxes. Cyclists pay zero. It’s grossly unjust. And nothing makes me more angry than seeing those freeloading cyclists streaming past a line of grid-locked cars stuck in a traffic jam. They should learn to suffer it like everyone else. Personally I think they’re probably all on drugs like that Lance Legstrong fellow.
And there is nothing more disgusting than seeing a middle-aged man on a bicycle wearing lycra.”
We all nodded vigorously in agreement. No one likes to see one of their own kind humiliating themselves. The mental image of MAMILS (middle aged men in lycra) made us all shudder.
“It’s not healthy” he continued. “All that pollution they breath in. Then there’s the traffic hazards! A fellow has to check every time he opens his car door just to make sure he doesn’t innocently knocked down some cyclist spinning past. They have no consideration for others. Imagine what damage they would do if one of them hit your door.” Colin rattled on and on with middle aged male certainty and everyone nodded and grunted like grey owls.
Finally it was my turn. I am absolutely convinced of the superiority of my favourite spectator sport, Rugby Union, over all other sports. In my opinionated opinion it has everything. As someone very clever once said it’s the perfect mixture of poetry and thuggery.
And, as rugby devotees repeat endlessly, rugby is “the game they play in heaven.” I’ve heard that mantra so often it must be true. So here is my Grumpy Old Men’s Club summary of why rugby is superior to every other major sport.
Rugby League is too stop-start, stopping after every tackle. Rugby Union flows beautifully, or at least it does until someone is concussed.
Soccer (or “football” as some prefer) is too random and requires too much concentration by the spectators. The fans riot out of dizziness and frustration because there are so few goals scored and the ball flies back and forth like a fly in a bottle, hurting the spectators necks. In rugby union only the players’ necks get broken.
Australian football? A handful of rich teams dominate the rest. With Rugby Union a handful of New Zealanders dominate the rest, but it’s the only thing Kiwis excel at so we are helping boost their national morale.
American football and baseball? Only Americans can understand the rules. Rugby is straightforward: use poetry and thuggery to ground the ball over the opponent’s try-line and then kick the ball through the goalposts. Simple.
Hockey and ice hockey? The puck is too small and goes too fast for the spectators to see it. A rugby ball is easy to see, until 30 large men jump on top of it when a try is about to be scored.
Cricket matches go for five days. Who has time for that? Rugby is 80 minutes a game. Just right for my attention span.
Basketball? Only the last five minutes are interesting. The rest of the game is like watching kids running up and down the school yard. Rugby, by comparison is like a grand tactical medieval battle.
So you can see my irrefutable reasons for the superiority of my chosen sport. It’s perfect. No correspondence will be entered into.
The next meeting of the grumpy old men’s club will feature discussion of why our city is the best in Australia compared to the cities of all those losers who live interstate. Our extra time topic will be “Why the younger generation is ruining the world”. This particular prejudice has been shared, according to reliable sources, by every man over 50 since at least 1770. It must be right.
