Or, “Seriously, why are they still here?”

I would never want total amnesia. One benefit, however, would be a chance to revisit all the routine things we do and see every day and to pick out all the stuff that doesn’t make any sense. Take a basketball game, for instance…

I’m pretty sure the first thing I would question is who in the hell are these “cheerleaders” in the goofy school-colored uniforms that don’t resemble anything a female on this planet would ever wear (at least in this millennium)? How about the dudes grabbing their butts as they hoist them over their heads?…I guess I can partially make sense of that.

Moving on, is it accurate to call someone a “cheer leader” when the majority of the time they’re being totally ignored while cheering goes on all around them? Dare I say, the cheerleaders sometimes appear guilty of being the most oblivious people in the stadium to the very thing that everyone else paid money to see. Shouldn’t they be the most excited? It seems like a person’s knowledge and fanaticism about a team should be part of the whole try-out process. Then you’d have some cheerleading, at the least, it’d be authentic.

And what’s with the leg kicks? When was the last time a leg kick got me psyched up about a game? Or pom-poms? Or a pyramid formation? As if I’m just sitting in my chair numbly watching a team play and then, suddenly, “POW” a leg kick from a cheerleader hits me like a bolt of lightning and I realize how intense overtime really IS…“Thank goodness the team designated people to lead the cheering or I would have been lost,” I would think to my relieved self…

I’m not saying this is a good thing, but it seems our society has moved beyond the whole cheerleading era, right about the time we hung up our letterman jackets for good, and gave up the cheers that started with “We’ve got spirit, yes we do…” And yet they’re still there, throwing themselves into the air, back-handspringing across the floor, igniting us with those feminine arm-extension fist pumps.

The mascots I can see. They’re original, over-the-top and goofy looking, kids get their pictures taken with them, they get into fights with other mascots, they’re funny on Sportscenter. Even horrible mascots, like the Cornell “Big Red” bear I witnessed this year at the NCAA basketball tourney, a mascot that petered out midway through most cheers and leaned on the scorer’s table, never raised her/his arms above her waist, was totally disconnected from what the cheerleaders were doing, entertained the shizzle out of me. I loved that freakin’ bear!

But the cheerleaders…why? Is it just our collective nostalgia, our desire to hold on to an innocent remnant of the past? Is it Title IX (i.e. preventing the schools’ elimination of men’s lacrosse?). Or is it we just haven’t been paying attention for so long it’s become like the clutter in our garage, useless as it is, it wouldn’t be the same without it.

And there is that wholesomeness, I guess; that Leave It To Beaver/apple pie, or in the case of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, bourbon flavor to it all. It’s uniquely American and, to that extent, I’ll accept it. Plus, without lacrosse, what would all the athletes do that aren’t good enough to play real sports?

–H.R.