To those of you who came out here to my site to read a sentimental revisiting of The TharpSter PounDown, please understand that I’ve changed my mind.
I will not be sharing my triumphs over the gravitational pull that Earth once held over me.
Just know that ten years ago, I set a goal to lose 60 pounds. Over that first year, I lost just short of 42 pounds.
In the following years, I put on anywhere between 10 and 20 more pounds.
With the help of a few books, a few apps, a dog leash or two, and a pandemic, I changed my behaviors.
As of this writing, I’m down 70 pounds from where I started.
No drugs.
No surgeries.
I just changed my behavior.
There I said it.
Now let’s talk about what happened to derail the original aim of this post.
According to Merriam-Webster, the word ‘retarded’ is “increasingly considered offensive“. Other definitions for the word out on the internet include:
- Affected with impaired intellectual development
- Occurring or developing later than desired or expected: delayed
- Socially inappropriate or foolish
Ladies and gentlemen, why is it that the same four people on one of my social media feeds insist on posting fallacious tales which echo ill-conceived narratives about the monster under their bed?
Why is it that the offenses they accuse the aforementioned monster under the bed are pulled directly from the toolbox of the team they’re supporting?
I’m sure there’s a word out there which would succinctly summarize my opinion about their behavior.
It’s on the tip of my tongue and at the front of my brain, but I just can’t think of it.
Why is it that I don’t call out those posts as being consistent with ‘impaired intellectual development’?
Why is that I don’t just ignore their ‘delayed development’ and scroll on to other things? After all, there seems to be an excess of tribute posts to the old show ‘Emergency!’ in my feed for reasons completely unknown.
Why is that I don’t publicly ascribe the behavior of these people to that of a fool?
Do I really care about those relationships?
I used to work with two of them.
One of them occupies cubicle space about 100 yards away from mine, and has responsibilities on the USB-port adorned school bus that comes nowhere near overlapping with my particular Venn Diagram.
The other one is extended family.
Half of them root for that particular football team up the road, and I suspect the other half has similar leanings. I have and continue to question whether that team is primarily comprised of the developmentally delayed.
Irregardlessly, it would seem that the best course of action to take is to leave them to their own battles with the monsters under the bed.
I’m at a loss for the word that would describe what it would be to argue with these people over the internet.
