Empty Calories & Male Curiosity, #17

Mickey Mouse Ice Cream: Nepotism and the illusion of importance

QUICK HITTERS

1. Happy Belated St. Patrick’s Day!

   

   “Why the fook is this stupid hat on my head.”

2. Thanks to all the OGs that have been reading and commenting regularly, I truly appreciate it! And welcome newbies. My goal is to make SilentPunt interesting and fun….and your feedback towards that end is always appreciated. Newcomers can subscribe below and OGs can refer. Cheers!

3. We have a special guest for this week’s book review. Our neighbor and buddy Logan F. read and reviewed my friend Lee Bacon’s new childrens book, Area 52. Logan read it in two days and loved it. His only request was that he gets to read the sequel on his kindle 😂. When I asked him what other books he’s read that it reminded him of he said, “the Harry Potter books.” High praise indeed! If you have kids, or have family or friends with young kids…get them this book here.

   

   Shout-out to Logan's mom, Meg, for teaching him what Area 51 was as well 😉.

4. On the next SilentPunt Podcast Travis and I will discuss our vegetable gardens. He was AWOL this week so luckily for me my Substack homie Tim Dawkins filled in for the latest episode, here. In OVERTIME I asked him a very loaded question……

5. Lastly, a reminder that reading on Substack.com or the Substack app is preferable than in this email. Footnotes and links and cool stuff like that make it a better experience.

GOING DEEP

Mickey Mouse Ice Cream: Nepotism and the illusion of importance

From the time I was very young, like before kindergarten, I would occasionally accompany my father to his place of work. He worked at a high school as a teacher and swim coach. This was the late 1970s and I have scant memories from this time but the ones I do have are vivid.

I remember riding my big wheeler around the pool while his high school boys plodded away in the pool that smelled of chlorine in the way I’d imagine the jungles of Vietnam smelled of napalm. 

I remember sitting outside of classrooms while gigantic high school students walked in and out. They looked like aliens to me. Large, well-dressed aliens. This was a public school but back then kids actually cared what they looked like. As opposed to the sweatpant wearing dults¹ that are today’s high school students. 

I particularly liked the girls. Several of the pretty ones would swoon over how cute I was. What can I say, I was a born heartbreaker.

Lastly I remember his co-workers. As we walked the halls it seemed that everyone knew him, and in turn me. They talked to me and treated me like one of their own. Dad would take me to the cafeteria and one of the lunch ladies would always give me a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar. 

The Mickey Mouse ice cream bar was right up there with the Chipwich on the top tier of offerings from any ice cream truck at the time. I’m not sure but I think the going price was a dollar. Which means that when I was lucky enough to actually hit up a truck my purchasing power would’ve probably been around a dime or so.

Making these bars outside my price range…

They still make ‘em!!!

I loved the attention my dad’s co-workers and the late 1970s teenage girls at Radnor High School gave me. But over time I began to feel something else. I’m not sure how to describe it, but guilt is maybe the closest thing. And not just because I was raised Catholic and guilt has therefore been implanted on my DNA.

It was this creeping feeling that these people were only being nice to me because they liked my father. My dad is and was a great guy, and a hell of a coach, so that feeling was definitely warranted. I just didn’t understand why it transferred to me. And gave me access to things others didn’t have. 

I say this as though my dad was this super rich NYC real estate magnate or something. Maybe you know the type?

No, I didn’t feel this way because I was bequeathed millions of dollars and connections throughout all of high society. 

I felt this way because of Mickey Mouse ice cream.

Yes, I may have passed down my stupid sense of humor to my child. And yes, I used to have hair.

Over time I grew to really dislike this feeling. There was a fakeness to it. Through the years, as he and his co-workers aged and the teenage girls got even hotter² it began to feel strange how delighted these people were to see me. Like I hadn’t earned it or something. 

This is what I was getting at with the subtitle of this piece about the “illusion of importance.” In general I disdain people that put themselves on a pedestal. But when that pedestal has been put there by mommy or daddy I find it that much more irksome.

The analogy that comes to mind is that old saying about people that were born on 3rd base and thought they hit a triple….

In my initial career I was a college football coach. Making my way up the ranks of the profession was not easy. It meant moving around the country and making very little in the way of money. But over time I succeeded and reached many of the goals I had set out to achieve.

Luckily those goals were not audacious by any stretch of the imagination. Had I had dreams of glory like coaching at a place such as Penn State, USC, or the Green Bay Packers I might’ve been more irked at the level of nepotism in the industry. A level that has only escalated as salaries in the field have skyrocketed. 

Below are the homes of Vince Lombardi and Joe Paterno:

Paterno was making roughly $50,000/year in the early 1980s at Penn State.

And here is current University of Southern California head coach Lincoln Riley’s….

Riley signed a 10 year, $110 million dollar contract in 2022.

I have nothing against anybody making whatever amount of money someone wants to pay them. And Riley’s ascension in coaching was well earned.

His younger brother on the other hand, who makes $2 million a year as an assistant at Clemson, is a prime example of just the type of nepotism I am speaking of.

_________

I say all of these things like it is a badge of honor to feel the way I do. But the world we live in doesn’t see it that way. It seems as though I should want to trade in on every favor I could possibly be owed.

For whatever reason I’m not wired that way. If through some stroke of nepotism I got offered a big-time writing gig I wouldn’t be interested. There may only be a handful of you reading this right now, but you are reading it because you like what I write.

And there’s a good chance you like me as well.

For me.

And there is no amount of money in the world that can buy that.

_________

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[I just finished the show Paradise and have been listening to this song on a loop ever since. I never would’ve thought someone could do a better version than Survivor from the 80s but this rocks. And the scene from the show where they use it is absolutely incredible.]

1. Scottish for dumbass.

2. At least they did when viewed through the lens of my now testosterone filled eyeballs.