Big Boy Pants
If you follow NBA basketball … and in particular, the Los Angeles Lakers … you know that this has not been a good season for Lakers fans. A team that seemed packed with enough stars to contend for the Championship has struggled to stay above five-hundred, enduring coaching changes, injuries, lack of chemistry between players, and players that don’t seem to fit in with the new system. Pau Gasol, the all-star forward who has won three championships with the Lakers, in particular, has had a hard time fitting in with the new coach’s system, so his scoring is down considerably. Pau is known as a sensitive player and at one point, Kobe Bryant (not known as a sensitive player) suggested that Pau needed to put on his Big Boy Pants, a comment that went viral on the web. You’d think that Pau Gasol, who is 7 feet tall and weighs 250 pounds, could only wear Big Boy Pants but, of course, what Bryant meant was that Gasol needed to stop whining and man up. A few nights later, when Kobe missed the final shot against the Houston Rockets, the Houston announcer gushed that, The Lakers pooped their Big Boy Pants, which also went viral. Isn’t sports journalism grand? Four months later, Bryant, never one to succumb to an injury, when asked if he would play after a severe ankle sprain, said, It’s Big Boy Pants time for me. He missed only three games. Last night, I watched The Other Guys, which includes Will Ferrell’s famous Big Boy Pants scene. And on theamericanthinker.com, I noticed that Brit Hume said that President Obama lacks the Big Boy Pants to take responsibility for what happens under his watch. Isn’t political journalism grand?
It’s hard not to be affected by all this machismo. Yesterday, as were driving from Los Angeles to Phoenix, Muri asked me how I was doing. I’d received an email about a business issue that had me a bit anxious and my stomach wasn’t feeling great. I’m OK, I answered. I’ve got my Big Boy Pants on. And to some degree, it’s true. I came home from my Men’s Retreat feeling not only more energized but more inclined to deal with my life as it is … which is, by any standards, pretty good. I’m going to take the steering wheel of this old body out of the hands of my Inner Forty Year Old and act my age. Some of this stuff I’m dealing with is standard Old Guy stuff. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to seek whatever help I need …social, financial, medical or psychological … I’m just going to do it with more grace. I suppose you could say I’ve put on my Old Guy Pants, but that’s not an image I want to explore.
Explore posts in the same categories: feeling olderTags: Big Boy Pants, curmudgeonly rants, feeling older, humor, Lakers, sports
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Older Eyes 
March 27, 2013 at 11:55 am
The female equivalent “big girl panties” has been around forever. I Googled it and newspaper articles from the 1970s use the phrase.
Maybe up until recently boys didn’t want to discuss their pants.
I, like you, realize on most days I have to deal with whatever life is handing me and act like an adult. BUT then there are days, I look fondly back upon easier times that didn’t have all the complexities of today’s world. I think when we were young, poor, and naive there were challenges but we felt invinsible with time on our side. As our available time dwindles, the pressure to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s can make “having our repective big boy or big girl pants/panties” not all that fun.
I would say just take your big boy pants off but then that doesn’t sound quite right does it?
March 28, 2013 at 12:01 am
No -go put those old big boy pants on and wear ’em with pride! There’s no need to be all kinds of macho about stuff that getting those knickers out and putting them on will hurt one itsy bitsy iota and probably will have the reverse affect for you with a release of tension then! (I always get confused by the word there -should it be affect or effect? Who cares? I’ll take my chances with or without my big (literally) and old (also literally) girl panties and let the chips fall where they may! Comforts come to us in many forms so find the one that works best for you.