Ho Ho...Hell

Christmas. Better known to me as, “Ho, Ho, Hell”. Gathering with extended family whose gifted teen children apparently lecture at Harvard Medical School while mine eek out a subsistence learning to say “would you like fries with that?” I try not to impale the proud parents of these overachievers on the toothpick tines from the Vienna Sausage hors d’oeuvres plate. The thought passes. 

“How nice, you must be proud.” I hate them with a perfect hate. 

“Indeed we are. Oh Todd! Come recite Homer in Italian where you pronounce the words backwards. (with aside to me) He’s such a hoot.” Death to these giants of DNA is assured by my cold small hands. Maybe not.

“That’s a lovely sweater. Macy’s?” I quip, hoping to change the subject from their Teen Nobel Prize winner in waiting.

“Heavens no! (she laughs, flopping her limp wrist toward me, weighed heavily by the jangling array of bracelets) we just came back from Sydney, ‘mate’ (she leans toward me to deliver the ‘mate’ making quotes in the air) where we stumbled into the this quaint….” I can no longer hear. My teeth grow numb. OK, I confess! I stole Lindberg’s baby. Stop! Let me sparkle away into a vanishing image like Captain Kirk, transported back mercifully to the bar would be nice.

Freeing myself from the endless prater of familial achievement, I stagger defeated, searching for the comparative safety of some dim corner. Nevermore, quoth the Raven. “Hey there stranger! How’s the family?” Ding, round two. Grasping his hair, I blast my knee into his groin. Well, maybe not this time. “Oh, same old same old, y’know”. Oh death, take me now to thy bosom of sleep. I remind myself to look up the word, banal.

Sitting finally alone, glancing down I discover the mustard on my shirt, evincing my foray of grazing among the ham biscuits. I’m fat. Fat with mustard, the appropriate accoutrement for fat people. Our badge. Our accessory for all attire. Our scarlet letter of French’s ingeneous squeeze bottle. I just wanted a little mustard. That’s all. Just a little.  Bottle turned upside down, with the distinctive ‘skweeeert’, we are tattooed as the heretofore slightly clogged squeeze bottle finds its sweet release avec moi. Christ said, ‘It is finished!’, didn’t he? I too am finished with this crowd.

If I smoked, I could flee outside. But as I don’t, with what excuse would I exit? The piano has started now. Damnable Christmas Carols deck these halls, all we in our gay apparel. Gathered ye’round the piano, ye merry folk. I can never remember the words beyond the title anyway. I shall freshen my beverage. And if anyone offers me eggnog I shall surely grasp my chest as death sweeps over me. God I love Christmas with the family. It’s right up there with finding Ivanhoe on my summer reading list.

Perhaps a respite of shopping at the mall. Perhaps water-boarding. Terrorist don’t have to shop at the mall, do they? We should air drop fruit cakes on Baghdad. Then they’d leave us alone as a gesture of pity. Shopping for terrorist girlfriends would be easy. A black burka or perhaps instead, a black burka. Or a nice new rock to pound your laundry on. Ho 

Ho Harem.

Night time brings the Christmas lights. A foul and pestilent brood of twinkling. Neighbor’s proud houses festooned with blinking brilliance, visible from the International Space Station. Santa stuck in the chimney, feet up. What a knee slapper that. At least their electric meter is spinning like the tie-dyed fat chic at a Dead concert. Whatever.

My house is dark. The plastic candles in the windows all fell taking palm sized chips of window sill paint with them. Apparently 12 strips of scotch tape didn’t do the trick. Are the Scotch known for their cellophane tape? Aye Lassie, fetch me some haggis whilst you pipe me a Highland tune of cellophane tape. I spent $50 on extension chords last year, white ones, the kind she says ‘you can’t see’. Now, nowhere to be found. They must dissolve while stored in the attic into some ephemeral Christmas ether. Unlike Frosty the snowman, those particular extension chords shall not be back again some day.

I’m going to nail the bastard candles into the sills next year. I’m going to Bermuda next Christmas. I’m going to find out where Norman Rockwell spent Christmas and go there. I’m going to give Easter baskets for Christmas. Maybe firecrackers. I’m going to aim low with expectation and hope not to shoot myself. Until then, merry Christmas to all….

….and all through the night.

To Run, or Not to Run

To Run, or Not to Run

I started running again. Well, I'm thinking about it. I'm closer to sixty than fifty, but I want to be a runner, and the only way I know to be a runner is to start running. This singular insight plumbs the complete depths of my exercise physiological insight. I have always admired those little, shriveled, gray haired, sticks in their seventies.  Defying their age, shuffling inexorably on, unstoppable, usually at 7:15 a.m. in a misting rain. And me, shivering and complaining my car isn't heated, as they wave smiling, skootching on by. They don't run, they skootch, a term reserved for old men running. But they're running. And I'm not. Do these guys have broken hip insurance? 

They wear colorful skin tights you buy at the Old Guy Running Store. Like the women I have seen nude on the beach, the women who should not be nude on the beach.  Likewise, these septuagenarian runners should not festoon themselves with the colors of the Italian Tour de' France team. Go for the kinder, simpler, Kenyan Marathon look guys, not Nieman Marcus. Bright splashes of color are reserved for young, bouncy, twenty something women, with swaying ponytails, and bouncing...ponytails. I want them jogging in place at intersections, where, I too am waiting for lights to change. Long, wonderful lights where the ever present impatientus honkblasteris invariably flaps up behind me. 

So I set my sights on some shoes. The elite, nineteen years old, minimum wage Adonis, five time marathon clerk asked incredulously, “Can I help you?”  

Perhaps, gripped with fear that selling me running shoes is a guaranteed lawsuit. Perhaps, perplexed how to tell me I should seek bowling shoes. Perhaps, praying he can escape impending sales torture by not having my size: 'biscuits & gravy'.

“Well...”  I swell my chest, certain of soon impressing this twit. “I used to run cross country in high school.”

“Really? Dude, when was that?” Decades.  No doubt before this gazelle was a twinkle in his father's eye.

“Aw, too long ago.” I gesture with my hand grandly. “I tend to pronate a little, do you have shoes designed to alleviate that?”  

My familiarity with 'pronate', the jargon of the runner, should assure my acceptance into The Club.

“Sure, most guys your age pronate. I saw that when you walked in. Flat feet, too? About a fourteen, I'd guess.” 

Ok, he's done this before with “guys your age”. Guys your age, my ass. I sizzle. He will have to die, of course. A slow, exhausting death on the treadmill of Sisyphus, after an expensive divorce revealing his embarrassing proclivity for odd sex; followed by financial ruin, expulsion, open sores of biblical proportion, swarms of gnats. You understand.

The last person to say 'guys your age' was my internist, after my quite innocent conversational mention of all the interesting Viagra commercials on TV, which he somehow misunderstood as a prescription request. Really! I mean, how silly. Well, ok, might as well try the stuff.

So, Adonis points to a wall of shoes, announces he will check the back, and vanishes.

“Pronator, huh? Yeah, me too.” Barks a gaunt old gent who could be my grandfather. “Slowed my ass down during my last half marathon. But Trisha, she's a supanator.  That woman can run circles around me.”  

He chuckles, taking out his glasses to read a Runners World on the shelf. The shop doorbell rings, heralding Trisha's triumphal entry. Tall, twenty years his junior, country club blond, store bought tan, Mercedes key in hand. They greet kissing as he pats her fanny, evoking a girlish squeal. I gotta get a pair of his shoes.

“How long you been running?” I ask. The appropriate runner's club inquiry.

“Well, after I retired and sold my OB/GYN practice for a blue ton, and met Trisha, 'bout eight years now. We run about....”  

I wasn't listening. Gee, I wonder how the gynecologist met Miss Hot Pants Divorcee, duh? Her browbeaten ex-husband probably signed over a fortune, fired his lawyer, then died jogging. Jogging be very, very good to Trashy, uh Trisha.

“Sir? Try these.” Boy Wonder returneth, dexterously lacing shoes for my approval.

“Do you have this in a black pump?” Me, pursed lips, cocked hip, flamboyant wrist draped. Dead silence. Crickets. 

“Oh, ha. Little joke here.” I tried. More silence and crickets. Trisha moves closer to Daddy-cakes to protect her from the Bad Man. I'm an idiot in a running shoe store, trying stand up.

“Uh, do you, like, want to try these on, Sir, or what?” 

Quietly, I sit in my time out chair, a thousand eyes staring as I grunt, clumsily forcing these winged glories on. First one, then the other. Ski boots go on faster.

Standing, I was transported to the Keds sneaker commercials of the 1960’s, when I was eight. Now, I could run faster, jump higher, stop quicker. Golly jeepers, these are swell! Winged Mercury, ha! That lollygag follows behind me now. Which way is Athens? Point the way to Marathon, Oh, Great Pheidippides. I am fleet of foot. Lead on!

Damn, these feel good. “Uh, mister, like, how do they feel?”

“Great!” I gush. “How much?”

“Uh, all these are, like, $159.”  

The blood drains from my face. But I must possess them. I will cut my children from the will.  

Returning to a brief lucid interval, I declare, finger raised; “Put my old shoes in the box. I'm wearing these!”  

The swipe of the opiate credit card, then the intolerable tension as distant servers parse my credit. Approved! Fooled them again. The plastic equivalent of the coal miner's company store. Cue Tennessee Ernie Ford in the dirge, “...sixteen tons and what'ya get. Another day older and deeper in debt...” I shall make the minimum payment till Jesus returns.

Knowing that I would commit ritual Seppuku should I blemish these beauties, I zig and zag around puddles.  Offering my interpretation of St. Vitas Dance back to my car, as the gawking homeless wonder if I should join their ranks. They want magic shoes too. Tomorrow, I shall run.

Tuesday: The morn in russet mantle clad wakes me to my sacred duty. Sweatshirt, fluffy white socks, ancient gym shorts, college golf hat, all bow in obeisance to The Shoes. I'm off. Slowly now. Little steps. Must first warm the Temple. The old skootchers amass in their pack behind me, poised for the kill. I see them. I sense their evil. The Force is strong with me Old Ones. But sensing fresh meat, they lash out at me.

“On your left!” The Banchee howls his ghoulish taunt. He passes me without striking. 

“On your left.” Another swarms behind me. 

I am unscathed as he abandons me to his foul wake. Then, another elderly bastard shuffles by, then another. They're circling the block, yes? Taunting me in their wicked sport.  

“On your left” echoes their last. They are suddenly gone in the distance. The shoes begin to fail me, cleaving magnetically to their native earth, weighing me down, suctioning to the earth. I must walk. No taxis? Darn. I must be miles from home. I search for landmarks in this distant land, burdened by my inability to breathe, summoning now my Will to Survive.

OK, I got half-way around the block. But, it's a big block. Really. Ask anybody. After all, tomorrow is going to be another day. I shuffle home.

Wednesday: Call 911! I've been shot in the darkness of my repose. I am hobbled, maimed, stiff. Were both knees replaced yesterday, yet I forgot? Lord? I shall become a monk, promise. By the way, about these knees.

My wife is right, maybe. I'll take it easy. I'll walk before I run. I'll ease back into it. But, remember? I want to be a runner. And runners run, right? Runners Anonymous? Hello, my name is Sam, my knees hurt. Hello, Sam. With these knees I'm not sure I can even walk 12 steps, despite my Higher Power. But, at least I'm in Recovery. Abstinence is the cure. Yet, I'm hooked! As surely as sparks must fly upward, a runner must run. It is our Soul. Our Being. Our Essence. Our very Nature. We cannot but seek the sweet solace of the Run.

Well, maybe tomorrow.