I Was Never Quite Like This

Irony isn't an all bad thing. An ironic viewpoint is much maligned, but you know what, you need it in high school sometimes.

I remember the first week I started work at a high school. I remember back in high school going to pep rallies, and I thought they were pretty neat. I played in the band (after I quick football itself), and certainly never got totally caught up in them. But they were entertaining, and I played my heart out on the baritone, and I cared about the game some. But that first week working at a high school, I went to that pep rally and was just blown away by how much the students all cared. There was no irony to their cheers. It was passion.

Maybe that's a place where lacking irony's pretty good. It's good to see the students care for something at least (they don't care much about their homework).

But look at this. The Winters Blizzards were voted the top 1A mascot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which now puts us up against the top mascots from the other divisions. Winters is pretty passionate about this vote. I'm surprised we haven't had a pep rally about it.

Anyway, what I linked to are the comments on the poll, and it seems to me as though people are a little too passionate about this. Sixteen of the comments are variations of "Go Blizzards." The other eleven are variations of "Suck my balls; we're going to win; so suck my balls" (though I doubt they'd ever use a semicolon correctly). Twenty-seven comments in all.

I'm pretty sure these students are going to go insane someday and probably be Nascar fans, too (which is close to the same thing). I'm all for caring about stuff, you know, throwing yourself into things and not keeping ironic distance from humans and their little endeavor. But Lord, you've gotta not care about some things.