Americans have a self-image that they derive from their vicarious identifications with heroes of football, baseball, basketball, the Olympics and the like.  And, indeed, we all know that Americans excel in these activities.  However, excellent athletes probably make up about .01% of the population.  There are many others of course, who, while not Gold Medal winners, are reasonably physically fit, so the percentage may climb to 1% or 2% of the general population.

But I’m not even talking about accomplished athletes or less well-known neighborhood heroes.  I’m talking merely about people who stand up straight and walk right, who have level shoulders and flat midriffs, even if they can’t jump 5 or 6 feet or run a mile in 5 or 6 minutes. 

When you get on the tourist beat, where invariably there are a lot of middle-middle and upper-middle-class American tourists, all of a sudden the erect,  upright and symmetric types disappear.  This is something I’ve seen time and time again as I’ve wandered the globe.  Ordinarily, I go my own way, in places where tourists are few.  But now and then, as in my recent jaunt to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, I find myself thrown in with the usual tourist crowd.  I hear English being spoken and overhear the usual tourist-type conversations.  One man relates, in a half-hour anecdote, how he knows only three words in Spanish, while all the others listen raptly.

But what I notice most of all is the big stomachs, the crooked spines, the sloping shoulders, the necks craned forward, the knock knees, pigeon toes, spindly thighs and shapeless posteriors.  I ask myself why some of these people don’t make even the slightest attempt to stand erect.  They slouch and slump, and the right shoulder is higher than the left, or vice versa.  The gut varies anywhere from the size of a chocolate cake up to the size of a pumpkin.  Legs are crossed, even as they stand, perched on one leg, the other sticking out in air, or as they lean forward, with their elbows on a counter, and their big unattractive buttocks flying to the sky.  They wear baggy shorts, with the waistband higher on one side than the other, with the posterior cleavage visible sometimes, and an out-of-shape tee shirt, half in, half out.  You can sometimes see a swath of fat pink stomach covered with unsightly gray hair.  I guess you can’t blame them for being almost bald, with a pathetic comb-over.  But the whole picture is not pretty.

I sometimes catch myself inadvertently slouching for a second or two, or leaning on a pole for a minute.  Sometimes I find myself with crossed legs, the sole of one of my shoes visible to another passenger on a conveyance.  But immediately as I discover that I’m in an unseemly pose, I straighten up, even up my sweater, hold in my stomach, and poise myself so that I am ramrod straight.  I feel ashamed that I might have been glimpsed lolling around unbecomingly.

But some of these people, males especially, look as if standing erect is an idea that hasn’t occurred to them in decades. These people are not simpletons, however.  Overhearing their conversations, I realize that one is an economist, another is a professor, another a contractor and so forth.  They all have money, they are all seasoned travellers and proud gourmets.  Don’t they care what kind of figure they cut?

Years ago, this embarrassed me, but as I have come to understand that most non-Americans, especially Europeans, like Germans, Englishmen and Frenchmen, are not much better than Americans in this regard, my sense of national embarrassment has vanished.  Still I wonder from time to time what makes these people tick.  These are the people who run the planet, but they look like bags of potatoes and rag dolls.  Talk about incongruities!

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