Locker room talk.
Like Statler and Waldorf, the pair of elderly Muppets, seated in the balcony box in The Muppet Theatre, complaining and heckling … like Statler and Waldorf these two grumpy old men sit on their stationary bikes in a popular gym, day after day critical of the current administration, from Washington to the Rhode Island State House.
To listen to them (I’m rowing away on the rowing machine in front of the pair), you’d think they have the solution to virtually everything and that solution is to replace everyone in office today.
Later, our grumpy pair are in the locker room. One says, he has a friend who’s going on a cruise to Croatia “and I don’t even know where that is.” Grumpy two knows … “isn’t that where they’re fighting a war.”
Hmmm.
Well, Croatia (the former Yugoslavia) is at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe. And no, it is not Croatia that is embroiled in a war with Russia, that would be the Ukraine.
You might think that a requirement of knowing everything is to know something.
Locker room talk.
The conversation among a combination of old and young men that all share the label grumpy, is about being inconvenienced by all the road and bridge construction in Rhode Island.
Why doesn’t that guy in Washington, head of transportation, do something, referring to Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation.
But it goes on, “he’s gay,” they say almost in unison, “there are too many of them up there.”
Locker room talk.
It’s far too reflective of conversations around dinner tables, in barrooms, at rallies, where people cheer what are outrageous lies, racial, religious and LGBTQ slurs.
In a recent conversation with Greg Howard, a Connecticut state legislator, a Republican, we agreed that too much civility has been lost. Too often parents forget that perhaps their most critical responsibility is to be a positive role model for their children.
Dr. Robert Harrison, a semi-retired emergency room physician and director of and instructor for “Zero Suicide in Washington County,” says “parents are constantly modeling to their children.”
Suicide, he says, is an “increasing crisis,” and without appropriate role models it becomes more difficult for troubled youth to find someone with whom they can trust and with whom they can talk.
The Centers for Disease Control says 10 percent of high schoolers have attempted suicide, and Harrison says suicide is the third leading cause of death among those 15 to 34, and second leading cause of death for those 10 to 15.
As demonstrated by the “grumpies” referred to earlier – and the constant reminders – we’ve lost civility in this country, our state, our neighborhoods, and, yes, sometimes in our homes.
Much like the story of the kid on the beach, hundreds, maybe thousands of starfish washed ashore, tossing them back one at a time – to a stranger approaching and questioning if he’s doing any good, he responds “it makes a difference to that one” as he tosses a starfish into the sea.
Much like that story, Harrison says “you can make a difference with the people you’re in touch with.”
In many ways, he suggests, our “civilization” hinges on our ability to reacquire civility.
“Civilizations are destroyed from within,” he says, referring to the Greeks and Romans. “Imploded from within.”
