Glory Days is one of the saddest songs ever. The sadness of this song is embodied by the character Al Bundy in the sitcom Married with Children that was popular in the late ’80s and into the mid ’90s. He once scored four touchdowns in a single football game. From there, he became a shoe salesman and was married to a shrew.
The schadenfreude was delicious, the once great high-school jock wallowing in the misery of being a loser. The cultural worshiping of athletes has always vexed me. When a privileged man gets a light sentence on his rape conviction because they are “a star athlete at a prestigious university” 1 that seems a brokenness in our cultural values. The high-school jocks I dealt with bullied me. They pissed on me in the shower. They bullied others too. The ol’ athletic tape jockstrap was popular. Sexual abusers, the lot of ’em. My main antagonist in the high school days took his own life less than a decade after graduation. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. It’s a better world for it. The rest of the family is in prison or dead from violence. These are the people we worship?
I’ve got some friends from my military days and at least for some of them, it seems those were the glory days. There’s an appeal to wrapping your identity in your combat veteran status that I get. It’s a bit of a “don’t fuck with me” sign that if displayed, is generally respected. That said, being used as a pawn to defend or acquire wealth that I’ll never enjoy never sat right with me and I’m not keen to accept my war fighting days as the best of ’em.
I once worked in the world’s largest train yard. Towards the end of my stint there, I was managing motive power resources across 23 western states and was making much more money than my high-school teachers told me I’d make with my level of motivation. It was soul-sucking work though. The only way for me to assure my success was to ensure someone else’s failure. No way I was going to let this be my glory days, regardless of the cool factor of railroads that some foam at the mouth over.
Spending a winter at the South Pole was a huge highlight. Spending a second winter in Antarctica made me wonder if my Antarctica years were my glory days. Many of the things I got up to on the ice did leave me with a sense of accomplishment that I had never felt before. It’s also an incredibly unique experience. I completely understand the folks who wrapped their identity in the ice person status and I was comfortable with Antarctica being my peak living days.
Working contract jobs with an end date led to a nomadic lifestyle so I began to live a completely different lifestyle. This eventually led to traveling the Pan-American highway over the course of three years. This was definitely it. The grand adventure. A different view from “the office” every day. I was living life to the fullest and these days were glorious. I wanted the trip to last forever. It didn’t.
So now, here I am, with an enviable view by anyone’s standards and enjoying perpetual mild temperatures. It’s an empty existence though. My past shows me that things have always gotten better with time. I’m hoping that my true glory days are still ahead of me.
At least I didn’t have to put a bullet through my head to avoid becoming a shoe salesman.