Judge — June 5, 1926 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Track Meet of the Nearsighted Institute This is a satirical sports cartoon mocking people with poor eyesight. The page depicts six track-and-field events reimagined as chaotic disasters—a "Relay Race" where runners collide, a "100 Yard Dash" starting in confusion, a "Shot-Put" wildly off-target, "Pole-Vault" ending in a crash, "120 Yard Hurdles" with athletes tumbling over obstacles, and a "Hammer-Throw" spinning dangerously out of control. The joke relies on slapstick humor: nearsighted competitors cannot see properly, so standard athletic events become accidents waiting to happen. The crowded audience sketched in suggests this is a public spectacle of incompetence. The satire gently mocks vision impairment while delivering physical comedy typical of early 20th-century Judge magazine humor.