You enable them. Yes, you. No sense in denying it.
Every single time you click onto the internet, you are enabling them. Every single time you touch your television remote, you are enabling them.
You can’t avoid it. Even if you are standing in line at the grocery store, the magazines on display are enabling them.
As soon as we figure out there is somebody around that runs faster, jumps higher, or hits a ball farther, we begin the process of enabling them. If they can sing, dance, and act, we don’t enable them immediately, but eventually we will enable them.
We put them in a different class. We treat them like royalty. We make them local superstars. Everywhere you look there are poor people, middle class people, rich people, and then these superstars. They are a separate class. These superstars come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and from all of the financial backgrounds. No demographic matters for the ones we choose to enable.
They come from the big city, small town, and the country side. They also come from other countries.
Eventually, some of our local heroes will turn into regional heroes. Some of those will move onto be some of the most recognizable faces in our society, not just nationally but globally.
We being to enable them earlier than ever. We know how fast they run, jump, and how well they hit even before they graduate high school.
At some point, even the ones that we enabled from birth will fall off the wagon. Some will not be able to resist the novelty of being enabled. Temptation will creep in, and they will make a wrong choice along the way. Thankfully, a good percentage of them were taught how to be enabled and will never make a negative headline other than a missed tackle, a thrown interception, or a ground ball between the legs.
Some are so good at what they do that they can continue to make wrong choices even after suffering the wrath of the law. We will continue to enable them. We will always take a chance on the ones that made poor choices. We want to be the ones that enabled them to get back on the right track.
We have made our bed, so we have no choice other than to sleep in it. When we continue to make superstars a bigger-than-life-itself-issue, we must suffer the fallout that comes with it.
When we see a former Mouseketeer suffer an aforementioned meltdown, all we can do is watch in awe. After all, we were the ones that enabled her to act this way in the first place. We continue to enabler her by making her a big deal.
When a player in the NFL gets arrested not once, not twice, but more times we can even count, we should close the book on his chance to be enabled. Somebody out there will give him another chance to be enabled again. It has become our human-nature.
There is a public outcry when we, the enablers, watch our heroes being hauled off in handcuffs. How could this happen?
We demand answers when their names are linked to probes involving steroids and HGH. Even though that every single person reading this would do the same thing had they been enabled for a better part of their life, we act like hold a higher sense of morality and would never stoop to such low measures.
Nah, not us. Keep lying to yourself, enabler. You are not going to be in a movie any time soon. Your name is not on the back of any jersey available at the local mall. Your hit single will not be made on your Xbox playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero.
So, in a sense, you are guilty as charged for excessive enabling and are sentenced to eternity in the Sin Bin. And no matter what comment you leave calling this enabler everything in the book, you and I are guilty. You didn’t log onto FoxSports.com to check the weather, did you? I didn’t have a hankering the entire day to write about the weather, did I?
It’s my opinion, so it must be right.
Signed, One of many enablers
(Note: I will never use the word enabler again. Promise. I annoyed myself, too)
