Aging & Wisdom Quote by Will Cuppy

Self-deprecation is Cuppy at his most surgical: a boast that arrives wearing the fake mustache of humility. “I don’t like to boast” is the classic throat-clear before a brag, but he swerves into the absurd with “skipped more poetry,” turning a culturally approved activity (reading poetry) into an athletic event he’s heroically avoided. The joke isn’t just that he’s lazy; it’s that he’s competitive about his laziness, staking a national record in nonparticipation.

The line’s real engine is the collision of registers. “Poetry” carries prestige, refinement, the faint threat of being tested on your feelings. “Age and weight,” meanwhile, drags in the blunt physicality of census forms, insurance tables, and locker-room comparisons. By measuring literary neglect with the metrics of bodies, Cuppy punctures the highbrow aura and reminds you that cultural capital is often policed through shame: you’re supposed to read the “right” things, and if you don’t, you’re supposed to feel small about it. He refuses the shame by parodying the very idea of accomplishment.

Context matters: Cuppy made a career out of wry contrarianism, writing in an era when modernism had turned poetry into both an art form and a social minefield. His quip flatters the reader who’s ever felt excluded by the temple of “serious” literature, offering a wink: you can opt out and still be clever. The intent isn’t anti-poetry so much as anti-pretension, with a side of American suspicion toward cultured virtue-signaling.