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What Is True Masculinity?
Why our answers vary and thus how we see the world.
Early in my dad’s military career he had the opportunity to live with a jock. This jock was a fitness nut. He would have his skin tight jogging outfit hugging his toned body and sport those fancy ground sneakers.
One day my dad asked what the outfit was all for and the jock replied, all flustered:
It’s special gear that someone like you wouldn’t understand.
At the time, my dad was a little on the chunkier side but the guy had a point. The outfit was ridiculous and saw little reason to be wearing something like that to jog.
The jock went off for his morning jog only to return 10 minutes later confessing to my dad that he just took a dump in his expensive workout outfit.
My dad didn’t see this jock until a decade later and that experience — followed by the subsequent jabs my dad gave him — must’ve scarred the jock because he was nothing like he was back then. Overweight and massive like an ox, the jock was night and day.
When my dad brought up that story, the jock laughed and said “I knew you wouldn’t forget something like that.”
My dad even had the pleasure to work with this former jock while he was stationed at that particular post. He…
