Intelligent Stupidity

Uncle Bubba was leafing through the Sunday sports page and skimmed through an article about Jameis Winston, the quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In Bubbie's opinion, the Buccaneers are a mediocre team due to mediocre ownership, mediocre management with mediocre ethics. For the uninitiated, Jameis Winston has proven to be, at best, of questionable character. It's only questionable if he will ever become a mentally mature man within his lifetime; other than that he has proven himself to be someone who has mediocre morals which fit in well with the Bucs and current crazy climate of the NFL. To his defense, he's a boy trapped in a man's body trying to navigate a rudderless pirate ship in a rudderless and completely unguided flotilla of the NFL.

All of that said, it brings us to the article in a paper. There were several quotes by former Bucs defensive tackle Booger McFarland, who joined ESPN's new Monday Night Football crew. According to McFarland, "Ultimately, the success of this franchise is going to depend on one thing: that's Jameis Winston. What he's got to learn is really simple: less is more. Less of the manufactured rah-rah stuff... Be the quarterback. It's a natural leadership position." McFarland went on pointing out examples of Winston's big ego and over-the-top antics. To quote the article, "McFarland's message to Winston: Be yourself, but temper it."

Bubbie's eyes fell on the next paragraph and he held in a hardy, sarcastic gut laugh while he read it through. "You look at other quarterbacks in the league. ...It's how they carry themselves. They step up to the podium and they look a certain way. You see them in public, they look a certain way. You hear them talk, they talk a certain way. The way they lead. The way they dress. The situations they do or do not get themselves into off the field. A certain way you've got to carry yourself. Just look at the ones that have been successful."

Bang! Uncle Bubba slammed the paper on the kitchen table and yelled, "That tears it! I can't believe it!"

"What?" asked a shocked Sweet Pea.

"Ever since we was kids we've been told to look at this person and that! We've been told to mind our parents and grandparents, to follow Jesus, to go apprentice or find a mentor. In school, we were taught history and learned about our forefathers and all the great leaders of the world and all their best qualities. We were encouraged to read biographies of successful people and use their lives as inspiration. In church, we study the bible and are supposed to follow Jesus, Paul, Moses, and Abraham and every other wise man in it. We had school teachers, coaches, scout leaders, and pastors. We had our heroes, comic book heroes, heroes in print stories and movies. Our entire society from the dawn of time has been all about finding successful people and be like 'em!" Bubbie ranted on, "And now this Booger feller nails it! He says to do just what we've all been told to do, all the time, forever!"

"Ok, Ok, calm down," Sweet Pea chuckled. "And why would that upset you?"

"Yes darlin', you're right," Uncle Bubba said toning it down. "It's just so dang infuriating when we have been force-fed a steady diet of just the opposite in the past how many years. Well, it's probably been a steady deterioration over many, many more years; who knows? We say what we should do and then do the opposite. We quit what works, we think that we're so dang smart that we outsmarting ourselves. It's just... intelligent stupidity."

"A deterioration of what exactly?" Sweet Pea asked.

"Well, I reckon," Bubbie spoke thoughtfully, "it's the deterioration of age-old ideals, and the idea that we are all in this ol' world together. We've sliced it up into individual pieces, it's all about me and mine. Oh, everyone says that in derogatory terms, like it's someone else's deal but it's all of us. Then everyone needs their space so we push the pieces farther apart. Talking face to face turned into computer chats and texts. I hate texts! They're so impersonal. So with all the what-about-mes isolated we become easily offended by anything we don't like or understand and demand censorship of everything. We're vilified if we don't 'do our own thing' and publicly shamed if we do, heaven forbid if we emulate our heroes. Every great thinker through history has been cut down into pieces, dissected and shown for the fallible person that they were. Yeah...hello...they were just people; like you and me. So we're supposed to just dismiss their genius? We think that because we live in a later age, that we're smarter than everyone who's come before us. Don't you think every generation has thought that?"

"Oh, I completely get it honey," Sweet Pea replied sweetly, "This world has turned upside down and it confusing to try to keep up with it."

Uncle Bubba sat back in his chair and gazed out the window for a minute and then turned to Sweet Pea. "It makes me sad Sweet Pea. It makes me sad because united we stand and divided we fall. I don't want to fall. I don't want anyone to fall. But I have an answer for that: come together. Maybe with more people talking like Mr. Booger we'll come full circle and start coming back together. We all need to grow up just a little bit more. Football is a team sport and the team needs to support its quarterback. Our country is a nation of people, one people... Americans; we should act like we like one another. As far as Jameis Winston becoming a winning leader is concerned, he'd be wise to heed the advice of Mr. Booger. In my view, we all would."

The Duke Remains The Same

The Duke happened to stop by Uncle Bubba's the other day for a short how-do-you-do. They were both pleasant and exchanged genuine niceties though it had been quite some time since they had seen one another or even spoke; it's been a long 2+ years for Bubbie since their friendship went off the rails. The heat of adversity has the ability to forge the character of a person much like a farrier shapes the red iron of a horseshoe. This has been the case for Uncle Bubba, a period of anagnorisis, the transition from ignorance to knowledge. Knowledge of what? A knowledge that there are many things in life that he got wrong. Knowing that instinct trumps intellectual reasoning, that common sense cures the wasting away of time. Not to say that he now knows everything, on the contrary, he is a babe in the eyes of God. Knowledge at this level can proceed peripeteia: a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation; that moment when the facade falls away and one finally sees oneself. It causes a crisis of spirit and crushes the ego but if survived brings freedom within one's soul.

On the surface, The Duke is the same ol' cowboy he always was and one never really knows a person under that level. But on this day, there is still a fondness there and so many good remembrances of fun, eventful times. Uncle Bubba's eyes welled up as he watched The Duke ride off into the amber light of the setting sun.

After The Duke left and things settled down, a story came to Bubbie's mind and he smiled; it's a tale by Jerry Clower near as Uncle Bubba can remember it. Jerry and Marcel Ledbetter joined the Navy. They boarded a train in Macomb, Mississippi and it took them all the way to Williamsburg, Virginia. When they arrived the bus hadn't shown up yet to pick them up and take them to Camp Perry so the boatswain's mate said, "Hey, y'all start sweeping out this depot while you're waitin' on the bus."

Jerry said, "Well, that's the first push broom I every pushed that wasn't made out-a shucks. And we was pushin' on them brooms and there was two fellas sittin' on a bench right there and they talked real funny to me and Marcel. Didn't have no idea where they was from. And we was pushin' that push broom and that fella looked up and said, 'Jeese, you's guys...' I'm 17-years-old there, I ain't never been outta the South. He said, 'Jeese, you's guys, who won the Civil War?' Well Marcel Ledbetter brought that broom right over his head and busted it and said, 'The Civil War ain't over!'"