Gang-life pursuit of a more shapely calf Jim Tucker

It’s funny the things you end up watching on video. I just viewed one for two minutes in the hope of seeing calves. But all I got was cars. And the calves I was curious about weren’t the sort that pop out of cows each spring.

No, I was after the muscle kind, the bit that runs down the backs of our legs between knee and ankle. Not just any old calves, either. I was looking for enhanced ones.

This bizarre quest began when I noticed something odd in a crime story. It said a gang member had spent laundered money on flash cars, rent…and calf implants.

Surely not. But there it was – the ill-gotten sum of $15,999.68 expended on having silicon implants inserted to enlarge his lower legs.

It didn’t say why. And it looks like he missed any chance to show them off. The Stuff news video showed a dude being loaded, handcuffed, into a police car – but his legs were hidden by long strides.

My interest in this goes deeper than you might think.

I happen to have useless calves, little scrawny things that brought nothing but derision from some young women when I was of a courting age.

I recall them pointing cruelly at my teenage pins and saying things like ‘‘well, anyway, your calves are too thin’’.

There were no such things as calf implants when I was a young man, otherwise I might have devoted my savings to the operation.

Instead, I wasted them on a red MG sports car, but could never be sure if girls were going out with me – the man with the hopeless lower leg build – or the car.

There are legitimate reasons for calf enhancement, of course, things to do with unfortunate malformation caused by health misadventures like polio, club foot and so on.

Getting that sorted would have a lot more justification than egotripping with your lower guns.

Roundness has become desirable, though. It’s not just the cliche´ of women (or is it men) wanting bigger busts that enhances the wallets of cosmetic surgeons.

The anatomical targets for men seeking better bulging includes butts, pecs (lower chest), biceps, triceps (back of the upper arm) and deltoids, the shoulder muscles.

Going back to our implanted criminal, I’m wondering what motivated him to seek enhancement. Surely it wasn’t the same sort of critique as the one I suffered. Who would be as brave as that? Fashion?

The gang world is undoubtedly just as strongly ruled by that as the so-called straight one.

Presumably, in this case there is also a demand for long shorts or short longs, anything suited to showing off calves. Except when you’re being arrested.

Fashion is one of the explanations advanced for a rash of shop ram raids this year, a pastime suddenly so common it’s drawing complicated explanations from social scientists.

One suggestion for resolving it is we ought to change the name. ‘‘Ram raid’’ is considered too empowering. When UK media started using ‘‘coward punch’’ in place of ‘‘king hit’’ the popularity of the latter faded.

My attempt to draw something out of fellow wordsmiths had only limited success. The best two were ‘‘loser looting’’ and ‘‘selfie raids’’.

Fashion changes – hammy calves today, maybe beefy forearms tomorrow. But whatever catches crims’ imagination, I’m not sure we need to bother discouraging them from spending up large.

It ought to be self-evident that ostentatious consumption is asking for trouble if you don’t have an obvious source of big income.

As for my own calves, I’m not bothered now. It’s what’s not visible that counts when you get to my age, the skeleton to which such muscles are attached.

If I had an enhancement bucket list it would include new shoulder joints, knees, hips, vertebrae, finger joints, big toes and all the other scaffolding that fancy big bulges are obliged to cling to.

Arthritis is a much bigger enemy to a pleasantly lived dotage than whether you can flash your pecs.

The only thing the newly rounded gang man can claim to have succeeded doing was beating the police recovery team.

The news video was mostly taken up with the loading of a fleet of flash black vehicles.

Nowhere did I see policesupervised plastic surgeons opening up the backs of anyone’s legs to get at the beautifully sculpted inserts you must be able to buy for the same amount of money as it takes to purchase a, say, decade-old BMW.

If I had an enhancement bucket list it would include new shoulder joints, knees, hips, vertebrae, finger joints, big toes and all the other scaffolding that fancy big bulges are obliged to cling to.