Oddity of the Week: Wreckreation
Created | Updated Aug 27, 2012
This week's Oddity takes a hard look at the seamy side of fitness.
Wreckreation
Everybody knows that exercise is good for you. Right? Just being in the Great Outdoors is healthy1.
Back in 1908, the magazine Puck wasn't so sure. This 27 May centerfold cartoon shows many possible bad outcomes of too much fun in the wild:
- Colliding with a horse-drawn carriage while athletically motor-vating in your automobile. (This was a more athletic activity when starting the car involved winding it up, we suppose. Also, picnics were frequently connected with some hiking away from the road.)
- Sinking your fishing skiff and having to be rescued.
- Shooting. Well, firearms are involved. Also, possibly, goats.
- Falling off the Eiger while mountain climbing. That's a pretty steep slope there.
- Falling afoul of blunt instruments during baseball season. After all, the sport does use melee weapons, which might attract the more mobile gamer if s/he remembers what 'outside' looks like.
We're not saying they were right in 1908. Besides, great strides have been made in sport medicine since Harry Grant Dart drew this cartoon. But we think the athletic folk from back then looked spiffy. After all, there's not a single article of neon-striped spandex in the whole montage.
1Unless, like the Editor, you have hay fever. Atchoo.
