by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

My first-ever suspicion that adults had no idea what they were doing came with my exposure to the game of soccer-baseball. Even as a child, it was clear that adults were conspiring to promote useless activity, as proven by the fact that they were compelling children to play a game where only the inconceivably incompetent could fail.

Thankfully, soccer-baseball has gone the way of jazzercise, but the threat of sports lurks over us, distracting us from more important pastimes such as worker revolution, building treehouses, beekeeping, the writing of haikus or any other non-sporting activity.

Needless to say, early exposure to vigorous and competitive activity encourages the later, lifelong addiction to spectator sports, which are obviously the creation of Satan, the devil and king of Hades. The evils of being a sports fan are so self-evident they barely merit mention.

Montrealers might rightfully feel proud of their collective campaign to rid the isle of professional baseball, but the imminent drop of puck will put a lie to our purported indifference to pro sports. Indeed this, the height of the pro sports season, exposes the ugly phenomenon of otherwise sane adults venerating inarticulate, herd-following jocks. It’s an ugly habit that causes people to be distracted from their important tasks, ignore their loved ones and spill difficult-to-clean chicken wing sauce on the sofa.

Blame the schools and parents for trying to seduce tiny children into the competitions that sow the seeds of the whole evil cycle of sports. Remember the dreaded “Champ”? You’d bounce a big red ball inside one of four squares painted on cement until some unfortunate child misses the ball. This game inevitably becomes a stage for malevolence and high farce, as cliques of children gang up to wipe out and stigmatize unpopular classmates.

Only sadists could ever derive gratification from the Bosnia-in-a-gym known as dodge-ball. Kids, I don’t mean to scare you, but the first time you get nailed between the eyes with the red gym ball, you shall fall into a spiralling descent of depression and long-term demoralization. Thankfully, there is a continent-wide movement afoot to ban this aerial bombardment of fragile children in gymnasiums.

Basketball must also be ended now as it’s an insalubrious sport that encourages people to shove their filthy underarms in the face of others inexplicably interested in tossing a ball through a suspended hoop. And any humane government would immediately quash all racquet sports in an attempt to stem the flow of ill-mannered children practicing squash, tennis and the absurd pursuit of badminton.

There’s nothing redeeming in softball, a pastime that seems to attract the greasiest, worst dressed residents of local areas to neighbourhood parks. Even hockey—if I’m permitted to descend into the anecdotal rather than my usual empirical arguments—didn’t exactly bring out the best in me (it’s rumoured that I once hospitalized a guy for three weeks with a highly illegal check). I demand the immediate return of all my youthful hours wasted chasing pucks, which would have been better directed to, say, helping me pass chemistry.

The myth that sports benefits the young has presented soccer as a character-builder, which is a true sham considering that heading a ball causes brain trauma and is known to lower IQ. Meanwhile, football is a great sport for socializing youth into wanting to maim and physically harm fellow human beings. Even jogging, while seemingly harmless, has encouraged damp, smelly and sanctimonious people to stride down our streets with grinning notions of moral superiority.

Government spending on sports must be immediately suspended and the scads of land devoted to such pastimes should immediately be put to use for other things. The Meadowbrook and Dorval golf courses should be reforested. The sprawling polo fields of Lower Canada College should be turned into refugee housing and the Blue Bonnets race track should be returned to farmland. Then we’ll sit and wait for the new era in which children find legitimate heroes and better ways to waste their time. :