I Was Thinking... Records

For several weeks the local paper has reported on local athletic records being set. New boys’ basketball scoring records were set at K-M and Triton. Several area girl players were recognized for scoring 1,000 or 2,000 points in their careers. Coaches set records for wins or number of games coached. Sports are very good at keeping track of records.
For 36 years, Babe Ruth held the home run record of 714 until Henry Aaron broke it. He set the new standard until Barry Bonds set the new mark in 2007.
It seems records are meant to be broken. But you wonder if today’s players will play long enough to threaten the current ones. Who knows if another pro basketball player will one day break Wilt Chamberlain’s record of 100 points in a single game. Sports love records, but so do a lot of other areas.
People are fascinated by the biggest, the fastest, or the longest lasting. Did you know the largest bull ever to be accurately weighed was 4299 lb.? A horse called Mammoth was a sire gelding that towered over seven feet tall and weighed in at a hefty 3,360 lbs, that’s definitely big. Many people desire to hold some type of record of their own. But if you aren’t blessed with unusual size or speed, you might find other ways to hold a record.
Joey Chestnut has become an icon of eating hot dogs. He holds the world record of eating 83 hot dogs (and buns) in just 10 minutes. There are also records for eating donuts, oysters, chicken nuggets, hard boiled eggs, crackers and more. One man claims he holds the record of eating the most Big Macs, 26,000 over a period of 40 years. Who would even keep track of such a thing?
But people seem to have an intense desire to be recognized for something special.
So many people want to hold a record that we even have a directory for them. The Guinness Book of World Records contains the strange attempts people have made to hold a record. One woman in Brazil has had 4,225 piercings. One man holds the record for most coconuts smashed with his fist in one minute.
Another woman had a fingernail measuring 2 feet 11 inches. The record for the longest mustache is 14 feet. One man spent six hours and 45 minutes to do 2,700 jumping jacks while another guy set a record for swinging on a swing for 36 hours and 32 minutes. Somebody also claims to have the record for the most rubber ducks with a total of 5,631.
Most people will never go to the extremes of others to hold a record. Yet there may be a lot of records that people hold that no one ever documented.
I grew up on a farm. I wonder how many cows my dad milked over the years. I wonder if he could have set a record for the number of hours he spent on the seat of a tractor. I bet my mom never calculated the number of meals she prepared over her lifetime. Has anyone ever kept track of the number of kids a teacher contacted over the course of a 35- or 40-year teaching career?
How many patients did a nurse serve over their career and how many family activities did they miss during that time. My father-in-law was an over the road trucker. Did anyone ever award truckers a record for the millions of miles they drove? Most of us are probably record holders of some kind but we just haven’t bothered to document them. As for me, I’m working on my current record of 758 consecutive days that I have not gone to the gym.
Did You Ever Wonder? — If a man sees something floating in the toilet when they start to pee, does it automatically become a target?