Being “˜a man’ is just plain stupid, especially when you get hurt

  Dylan Hernandez Anyone interested in
joining Hernandez for his monthly run can write to him at [email protected].
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My calves are still sore from a run I went on last week. For the
last two or three years, every time I’ve gone to run,
I’ve ended up like this, with pools of lactic acid clogging
my legs for days.

Since graduating from high school, I’ve generally run
about once a month. In a good month, I’ll run twice.

Despite being in the worst shape of my life, I refuse to go on a
short, relaxed jog around Westwood. If I did, I’m sure I
wouldn’t come out so stiff each time. But I can’t get
myself to do that.

From the time I started playing sports, my dad filled my head
with machismo crap. He stressed that I should be tough. He wanted
me to be “a man.”

I listened.

As a kid, I rarely missed an athletic practice, much less a
game. On days when I was out of school because of sickness,
I’d always show up for practice. When I was 11, I played an
entire soccer season while the big toe on my right foot was
broken.

I found this honorable at the time, but over the years,
I’ve found that the difference between tough and stupid is
minute, if not non-existent. I’m still trying to figure it
out.

I started running in high school and it was then that it first
hit me. Being “a man” wasn’t always smart.

As a sophomore, I ran hard everyday in practice. Eventually, I
hurt my hip so badly that I ran with a limp through the fall. The
following year, I had a stress fracture in my shin that kept me out
of competition for six months. Many times, I started running before
I was fully healed, prolonging the injury. My senior year, I was so
eager to make up for all I lost in the past couple seasons that I
overtrained again and got a small tear in my quadricep.

This same “push it to the limit” idiocy also led me
to throw up for the first time from excessive alcohol consumption.
Two winters ago, I was in Las Vegas with a couple of friends.
Earlier that night, we drank and went out to town. Then we returned
to the hotel for a nightcap.

I started downing shot after shot. For some reason, I took
tremendous pride in the my abnormally high alcohol tolerance. The
more you could drink, I reasoned, the more of a “man”
you were.

My buddies and I were happily watching SportsCenter, laughing at
just about everything on the TV screen.

At one point, they showed Cade McNown, then a senior at UCLA,
taking a hit.

“Now, that’s a man!” I screamed.
“McNown, he has balls!”

Suddenly, my mood changed. I don’t know what triggered it.
I started feeling threatened by McNown. I had to show him who was
the real man.

“I am the greatest!” I proclaimed. “I am the
champion of drinking!”

I walked over to the television screen and stuck my finger on
McNown’s image.

“Huh? You want to see a man? Well, I’ll show
you!”

I quickly poured about two shots worth of vodka into a plastic
cup and knocked it back.

Immediately, I knew it was a mistake. Those were shots No. 13
and 14.

I slowly walked backward and stumbled into my chair.

“Uh… guys… I’m going to pass out…”

I dropped my head forward and closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew, I was on all fours in the corner of the
bathroom. A purple fluid flowed out of my mouth like water from a
dam. I was nowhere near the toilet and the vomit was getting on my
slacks.

According to my friends, I started calling for my mommy.

So much for masculinity.

After that, I’ve been more careful. These days, my friends
make fun of me when we drink because I take in only a fraction of
what they do. It doesn’t bother me. Maybe I’m more
secure with my masculinity. Maybe I realized most men aren’t
that tough and that being a wimp isn’t that bad. Maybe I
don’t want to die. I don’t know.

But when I run, this primitive impulse of mine to prove my
manhood comes out. In high school, I used to run five miles on my
easy days, so I never run less than that. And if I don’t run
hard and make myself hurt, I feel as if it’s a waste of
time.

I know it’s stupid and that having guts isn’t
gender-biased. I’m not the only one with this problem,
though.

You frequently hear stories about boxers who were brain-damaged
from taking too many punches or football players who can no longer
walk properly because they played through too many injuries.

I guess some people never learn.