Back to School
Leave it to someone in the education industry to actually give me a homework assignment for my blog. So Jocelyn has assigned me to write a meme. Like she said, a meme is basically a blog chain letter. I feel like I'm back in college again, trying to get a paper done at the last minute.
But I try to be a good sport, so I will do this meme that she "tagged" me with. The problem I have with this has nothing to do with the concept of a meme. The issue I have is with this particular meme's topic: Six Weird Things That Have Happened To Me. Nothing too weird has really ever happened to me.
I have a very enjoyable but stable life. I haven't hung out with the drummer from Huey Lewis and the News in an elevator. No one has ever come up to me, bleeding from the eyes and asked me if I had a map of Idaho he could borrow. So the six weird things I can think of may seem, shall we say, less than freaky.
So you can read this post standing up. You don't need to worry about having to change your underwear when your done. And there will be no cases of slackjaw at the end of this post.
Jocelyn is a writing teacher, so she should appreciate themes. Since the bulk of my posts as of late have been about Texas and running, I am going to try to confine all the weird shit that has happened to me to these two topics. And to really suck up to the teacher, I will begin with a story that took place in Duluth.
So I hope all this will prevent Jocelyn from docking me ten points for turning my meme in late. Away we go...
1. I ran my first marathon, Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, back in 1999. Until then, I was a former middle to long distance runner. I had never even raced anything longer than an 8k, much less 26.2 miles. Having taken five years off from running, I was unaware that polyester, in the form of CoolMax, had made a comeback. I figured if a cotton t-shirt worked for me back in college, it would certainly work for me now.
It turns out I was wrong. Cotton may work for an eight mile run. It does not work in a marathon.
One of the things that truly disgusts me about marathons is the bloody nipples that so many men get. And it turns out there are products like performance gear and body glide that help prevent nipples from bleeding.
Open letter to Lord: May all future men who run a marathon, including me, be aware of these products. Amen.
So back to 1999. I finished Grandma's in a t-shirt that happened to have the University of Wisconsin logo on it. Rookie error. I did not go to Wisconsin. I can't tell you anything about Wisconsin sports, other than they're pretty good. And I have never been to Madison for more than a few hours, where the university is. But for 26.2 miles, crazed spectators shouted "GO WISCONSIN!" at me. One woman even broke into the Wisconsin fight song as I went by.
So clearly this shirt was a poor choice. After I finished the race, I loitered about the post-race area. I was in a bad mood because, well, running 26.2 miles will do that to you. So I was getting more and more pissed off at all the guys walking around with their shirts still on, stained with nipple blood. I wanted to grab each guy and yell, "HAVE SOME FREAKING PRIDE WILL YOU??? CHANGE YOUR SHIRT!! YOU ARE GROSSING EVERYONE OUT!!!"
About thirty minutes after the race, I was sitting with Emily and some other friends, when I said I was going to get some ice cream. A friend of mine said, "Don't you want to change your shirt first?" And everyone laughed.
I assumed this was because of the damn Wisconsin logo, but you, gentle reader know better. Sure enough, when I looked down, I saw it. Two gushot wounds to the chest.
There I was, one of those disgisting male marathoners with a white shirt and bloody nipples. Have some pride.
It is a very weird feeling to look at your own shirt and realize you have become what you despise.
2. When I was in high school, my sister went to college in Rhode Island. I visited a few times, which was fun. One of the highlights was going to Boston and Fenway Park to watch a Boston Red Sox game. During one of our sorties to Fenway, a girl started shouting my name. "Damn yall," I thought, "I even got it on the East Coast. I'm such a lady's man the lasses even know me in Boston." But I turned around and it was some girl from my high school. "Not so cool," I thought, "That girl is kind of annoying."
About six years later, when I was in college, my friend and I went on a road trip during the summer. We went to a lot of baseball games on this trip. One of them was to Fenway Park. We drank a lot of beer before we got there. We sat in the bleachers and drank more beer. I tried to teach a kid how to keep score. He ended up correcting everything I was telling him. I drank more beer and decided it was time to go to the bathroom.
As I was washing my hands, I looked over to the guy washing his hands next to me, and it was a guy I went to high school with.
Fenway Park in Boston is clearly is the place for me to see how my high school classmates from San Antonio are doing. Maybe we should have our 20 year reunion in the men's restroom of the Fenway bleachers.
3. Speaking of San Antonio back when I was in college, I was running on a stretch of road on Vandiver. You know where I'm talking about. By the old Kroger that had the Ms. PacMan, the Little Ceasar's, and the check cashing place, just past the Austin Highway.
This was the summer of 1991. It was 5 p.m. in August. with triple digit heat and humidity. So all I had on was my running short, socks, and shoes.
A guy sitting on his bike on the shoulder of the road stopped me, addressed me as sir, and asked me if I had any cigarrettes.
Uh yeah, Lance Armstrong, I take a smoke break every mile. I stash my Marlboros in my underwear and I pull them out all sexy-like. You know like a sultry woman who keeps her driver's licence in her cleavage (I'm thinking of a movie like Cannonball Run). Only my cigarettes are drenched in ass sweat, but help yourself, Lance.
Fast forward to a week later: same time, same place, same attire, same run, same weather. As I was crossing the Vandiver/Austin Highway intersection, a guy in a Suburban honked his horn and waved to me. I thought it must have been one my friend's dad, so I waved back. Eventually he got through the light, and caught up to me, at the same spot where the guy asked me for cigarettes.
But this guy asked me if I had something else I wanted to give him. Actually, he wanted to give me something, and, um, well, it involved, well, what he offered carried the assumption that I was a) gay and b) into hooking up with random strangers I see at the fabled Austin Highway/Vandiver intersection.
Gross. Not for the "gay" part, so much as for the "asking random strangers who run across Austin Highway part for sex" part.
I declined, and realized this guy was not my friend's dad, afterall.
What the hell was up with the Austin Highway/Vandiver intersection back in the summer of 1991?
4. Speaking of running in San Antonio, we'll call this The Ballad of Israel Flores, as it takes up items 4 and 5.
Israel was a rival of mine back in high school cross country. His school, Edgewood, was in my district (Minnesotans call them conferences) and was part of The Lamest Race Ever Won In A Cross Country Meet In the History of Time. This historic event occured in I think 1987 and was won by yours truly.
I was a sophomore and had a pretty good chance to win the race. But only because the best runner in the district, my teammate Cuatro, was in the state tennis tournament. Even without Cuatro we had a good enough team to advance to the Regional Meet, so this was an ideal, no-pressure situation for a second-fiddle guy like me to actually win.
The first two miles of the course were very hilly, and on a narrow path that ran through the woods. The last mile was flat and fast and finished on the 50 yard-line of Edgewood High School football field.
My coach figured most of the other good runners would take off too fast, as they would be preoccupied about getting packed in, away from the lead. Our plan was for me to sit in the weeds, and really run aggressively for the second half. And I did just that. At about 1.5 miles, I started passing all the usual suspects.
Johnnie Black, look at the back of my shoes. Ortho Mendez, you are now in my rearview mirror. And then I surged past Luis Ruiz right as we got out of the foilage of the first two miles. With Cuatro gone making like Bjorn Borg, that was everone left in the race I had to worry about.
But as I came past my coach in the open field he started yelling, "You're in second place! Keep surging!"
Sure thing Coach, easy for you to say. Apparently you can yell without that nagging feeling of oxygen debt. Wait! Huh? Second place?
"WHAT? WHO?!?!?" I shouted back.
"I don't know. Some guy from Edgewood. Just go get him!"
Again, easy for you to say. Sure enough, now that we were out in the open, rather than the One Acre Woods, I could see a guy in a red unifrom running all by himself. Oops.
And that was my introduction to Israel Flores.
So with less than a mile to go, and a 200 yard lead, this race is Israel's to lose. And lose it he did, no thanks to me.
I chased after him, just enough to find that balance between running hard enough to keep my coach off my back, and not so hard that my heart would explode in the name of a race that was already decided.
So I made an ostensible attempt to catch Isreal as we entered the stadium and did our half lap around the track before running through the field goal posts en route to the 50 yard line. I was maybe 100 yards back as he made it to the goal posts, and he had 70 yards to go.
"Well played, Israel," I thought, "This was your home course, and you knew how to run it."
Or did he? Either Israel decided to run his victory lap before actually finishing, or he didn't know his home course afterall. He made like Charlie Brown and kept running around the track, after the goal posts. Edgewood coaches and fans were screaming at him to turn around and go through the goal posts.
I saw this and found my fifth gear. Like a cat, I cheaply pounced on that dying bird. I sprinted through the goal posts ten yards ahead of Isreal, who had finally doubled back, and I sprinted to the glory that was the district title for whatever district we belonged to.
So there you have it. The Lamest Victory Ever. In fact, it's a Trinity of Lameness. I beat a guy who ran 5200 meters to my 5000. I didn't even know he existed until my coach told me with less than a mile to go. And the best runner by far wasn't even there that day.
And here is the weird part. After the awards ceremony, I walked past some guy from another school. "Man! Awesome job!" Evidently he was running the race too, and had no idea just how cheap that victory was.
5. That was my sophomore year. By the time I was a senior, Israel many opportunities to avenge his loss. With the playing field level (i.e. he doesn't spot me 200 meters), we had some pretty good races and I'd guess we were pretty even. But then I was hit with shock and devastation when I read in the paper one night that Israel Flores was shot and killed in gang related violence near Edgewood High School. This completely conflicted with the Israel I had known for over three years.
This was awful. I talked with my friend Cuatro and my coach about it. I talked to my mom about it. We decided the best thing to do was just to send flowers to the family and not do anything more grandiose. The pain was palpable.
But then my coach called me 48 hours later and told me my rival, Israel Flores the runner is alive and well. Sadly, another Israel Flores, a football player was the one who was shot and killed. It turns out Edgewood had not just these two, but three Israel Floreses. So it was with a lot of guilt that I felt relieved that one Israel Flores was okay, even if that another one's life had to end so tragically and unnecesarrily short.
And it was strange all year to race Israel, and try to beat him every time I faced him, after mourning his death, Tom Sawyer style, for 48 hours.
6. In college cross country on the Fridays before a big race, we'd go for a casual three to five mile jaunt around campus for practice. We called these Campus Loops. Sometimes we'd run through the library. Or the dining hall. Or the dorms.
One time Soul Asylum was on campus to do a Friday night show. So as part of our Campus Loop we ran through the buidling that housed the hall/lounge where they'd be playing that night. Soul Asylum happened to being doing their sound check as we ran by.
The lead singer, I want to say his name is Dave Pirner, saw us and said into his microphone, "Hey look. It's the jogging team."
So there you have it. Six weird things that have happened to me in Texas and/or while running. I hope I get a better grade on this than I did on most of my college essays. And I hope it was a little more interesting.
