Quasimodo

The Stone Mountain running enclave has been meeting at 7:30 on weekend mornings for more than 35 years. Some of us arrive early for the weekend runs to get in a couple extra miles in the pre-dawn darkness before the rest of the group shows up. We have become so familiar that we can recognize each other in the dark by our running form, sometimes at half a mile or more away.

Not too long ago my running buddy, Robin, mimicked my running form for the rest of the group. She ran like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo. Hell, she looked like Quasimodo finishing a 7-day ultra-marathon. It looked grotesque. Everyone cried out, “That’s him, that’s him. That is Tom exactly!” which was followed by raucous laughter. I was horrified. I’d always envisioned myself as an elegant gazelle or cheetah when I was running. I prefer my delusions to reality. Reality sucks.

I mentioned this incident to running buddy Scott during a recent run. Scott said, “Do you know that you look like Grandpa McCoy when you walk?” (Walter Brennan in the Real McCoys 1957-1963) Grandpa McCoy was an old man who walked with a pronounced limp. His walk was close to a skipping motion when he was in a hurry. It was a serious hitch in his giddy-up. Thanks, Scott. I feel better already. (Sarcasm intended)

During the first steps of yet another run I commented to Jean that I felt like an old man. She said, “You run like an old man.” Not exactly what I wanted to hear.

At the beginning of a run these days my entire body is stiff and sore from the previous day’s workout. It takes an entire mile for my muscles to warm up, and my tendons to loosen up, before I am able to manage something that resembles running. Things take longer these days. Actually, everything takes longer these days.

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So I’ve grown old. Wasn’t I supposed to grow old? Did I have another choice somewhere along the way? Did I do something wrong to cause this to happen? Was there an opportunity to freeze time or reverse time? I am actually quite happy to be old. It beats the alternative. The only realistic alternative, death, isn’t particularly attractive.

I can only do the best I can with the body I presently have. So what if I don’t run like a 25-year-old kid? I am not a 25-year-old kid. I run like a 58-year-old man. In fact, I run pretty well for a 58-year-old man. I am okay with that.

I know all too well that I am physically not the same runner I used to be, but I still feel mentally like the same runner I used to be. I still enjoy getting outside in the elements and observing the world going by as I run. I still enjoy the training, the racing, and the camaraderie of my colleagues; I enjoy the entire experience. I don’t run as fast or as well as I once did, but I enjoy the running experience just as much as I ever did.

So is there something I am supposed to regret?
I don’t think so.


Alternate Ending

So is there something I am supposed to regret?
I only regret that my time is finite and dwindling.
(Life is short. Eat dessert first.)

Cotton T-Shirt

I went for a 5-mile run with the guys at Stone Mountain Park this morning. Before I left the house I checked the temperature from two separate sources. Both said roughly the same thing; 70 degrees.

Seventy degrees indicated that a racing singlet was appropriate running attire. A technical t-shirt might be a little warm, but a cotton t-shirt would definitely be too warm for the weather. I knew all my running buddies would be wearing cotton t-shirts because winter was just ending, so I wore one also. I knew better, but I did it just the same.

It was no surprise that I was hot after the first mile, soaking wet after the second mile, and miserable for the remainder of the run. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, doesn’t cut it. I knew better, but I did it anyway. I wore the cotton t-shirt because my buddies were, and I was sorry that I did.

Afterwards I was disappointed in myself that I had so easily succumbed to peer-group pressure. Here I am, a 58-year-old man who has been running for 43 years, and I still found myself yielding to peer-group pressure in the simple matter of choosing the right shirt.

So here’s the lesson that we all know all too well. If we cannot do the small things without succumbing to peer-group pressure, how are we going to manage issues of real consequence?

Beware my young apprentice the dark side of the force.

April 2010

Kneepads

I apologized to my mom (Gladys) the other night that she was not a more prominent figure in my writing. Mom is just too normal and well-adjusted to be an entertaining and compelling figure in my stories. If she were quirky and odd she might get more playing time. Thus it is that all too many of these stories are about my dad, or me, or my kids putting up with me. I have the good sense to never, ever, write something about my wife Jean, who is the model spouse, mother, and grandmother, and also have the good sense to suck up shamelessly, as I just did.

BK, which stands for “Before Kids”, Jean was teaching at Avondale High School. When my folks came down to visit we took them to a high school wrestling meet for entertainment. We were too poor, and I was too cheap, to do anything more expensive than that at the time. Jean and I had been married for a year or two at most.

I was quite full of myself at the time. We were married, we had a respectable house, we both had jobs, and I was a “mature” man of 28, or so I thought. When we went to the wrestling meet I decided that I was, at long last, psychologically tough enough to sit with my father. My father had a long history of behavior that was embarrassing to me. I decided those days were over. I decided I was old enough, mature enough, confident and self-assured enough, to sit with my father and watch the wrestling meet as fellow fans. Jean and my mom, remembering history, had the good sense to sit a couple of rows behind and to the side of us.

We were sitting in the stands, watching the meet, cheering and yelling out advice to the wrestlers along with the other spectators, advice which was summarily ignored or not heard at all. Midway through the meet, during a particularly boring match, the two wrestlers went out of bounds as they often do, and the referee stopped the match to move the wrestlers back to the center of the mat.

As the wrestlers made their way back to the center of the mat the gym was quiet due to lack of interest and lack of activity in the match. One of the wrestlers was wearing large kneepads which had slipped down to his ankles. I mentioned to Dad that the referee really ought to make the wrestler pull up the kneepads as the opponent would not have a fair chance to grip the ankles with his hands, which is a primary point of attack.

As the wrestlers were settling in to restart the match, and the referee was about to blow the whistle, my dad starts yelling “HEY REF – THE KNEEPADS ARE ON THE ANKLES, HE NEEDS TO PULL THEM UP, IT’S NOT FAIR TO THE MAN ON TOP, MAKE HIM PULL THEM UP REF, MAKE HIM PULL THEM UP”. Dad was relentless. Did I mention loud? Dad was always loud in him most embarrassing moments.

The whole gymnasium heard Dad’s comments, which in fact were mine, and the Ref heard them too. Dad was so loud in the quiet gym that there was no way he could NOT hear them. The Ref hesitated just a moment before blowing the whistle, and instead elaborately put out his arms to stop the match, and instructed the wrestler to pull up his kneepads. The whole gymnasium applauded the Ref’s decision and looked at Dad who was the cause of that decision.

The man sitting next to me turned and said, “Is that your father?”
With a smile I turned and said “I never met the man before in my life.”

Not Ready For Human Consumption

There is nothing wrong with having nothing to say – unless you insist on saying it. (Author unknown)

I posted a piece titled Friendly Competition the other day and then pulled it three days later. It just didn’t live up to my usual low standards. I didn’t have anything to say in the posting and couldn’t even manage to say it in an interesting fashion. If I didn’t enjoy the piece how could I expect anyone else to enjoy it? I was embarrassed by it, so I pulled it.

I keep all of my work in a single Microsoft Word document that is 159 pages long and contains 93,836 words. The first 50 pages are works in progress. The last 109 pages contain the 101 published posts and the 6 pieces that I’ve deemed ready for posting in the coming weeks. Friendly Competition has been banished from the completed section and now languishes in 50 pages of incomplete thoughts that are not ready for human consumption.

It really hurt to banish Friendly Competition. There are only 6 pieces ready for posting, so I am feeling the pressure to wrap up a few of the incomplete projects.

Last night I couldn’t sleep because I was worrying about how to approach a posting titled Exclude. I’ve spent several days and countless hours writing and re-writing the piece. When this happens I begin to worry that the problem isn’t my inadequacy as a writer, but perhaps lies in a more fundamental truth that the topic has no substance, or that I have nothing to say. That’s how I felt about Friendly Competition.

Friendly Competition wasn’t, and never will be, a deep meaningful posting. It was just an attempt to express my admiration for the sport of swimming, distance swimmers in particular, and the prevalence of sportsmanship within the sport. Having said that here, what’s left to write? Anyway, I hope that I can find a way to make Friendly Competition worth your time in the coming year.



Postscript –

Note well that my monster Word document sits on the desktop of my laptop. Every time I open the document, which is every day, I rename the file with the day’s date, and copy it to a thumb drive as a backup. I also email the document to my own Gmail account at least once a week so I also have a backup copy there. I hope that satisfies any concerns you may have about my backup procedures. If you have a better process in mind, please let me know about it.

Bugs

Parents fear that their children will grow up to be just like them. I wanted Ann and John to be smarter than I was. I wanted them to be wiser than I was. I wanted them to be fearlessly brave in all their endeavors. I wanted them to be braver than I was as a kid when it came to critters. I wanted them to be like those ballsy kids I used to know who’d pick up small life forms that crawled on the ground and show them to their friends.

I wasn’t terribly fond of bugs as a kid, which is a kind way of saying I was chicken. I always admired the kids who had no qualms about picking up grasshoppers, snakes, or anything else that crawled or slithered on the ground. There was something admirable and brave in those kids that I knew I lacked, and hoped that someday I might acquire their fearlessness.

For my kids to become fearless in the creepy crawling disgusting real world I decided they needed a role model, and that role model should be me. I started by washing dishes and not gagging when I cleaned the slimy gook from the strainer in the sink. Then I managed to change diapers without nausea. I graduated to rinsing soiled cloth diapers in the toilet with one hand while drinking orange juice in the other. Later still I was able to eat a bagel while peering down into the septic tank as it was being pumped. This was followed by crawling on my belly like a reptile in the crawlspace of our house to light the furnace amongst a horde of camel crickets that were jumping, landing on my face, only to jump off once again. These things still freak me out, but I have managed to control my gagging and screaming reflexes.

By the time the kids were old enough to totter around outside in the yard I’d grown a sufficient backbone (my momma wouldn’t let me say “a pair of balls”) to pick up various bugs and snakes in the landscape and show them to the kids without revealing the coward that that lives within me. I’d hold the critters in my hand and encourage them to touch and hold them too. We’d call Jean out to the yard and the two of us would “ooh” and “ah” at the wildlife to generate a proper appreciation in the kids. Jean didn’t mind the bugs too much, but the snakes took some serious acting on her part. (Yet another reason why I love her)

Today’s story took place when the kids were in elementary school. We caught a beautiful caterpillar and put him in a homemade bug box for observation. He looked like this.

I don’t want to take the time to investigate and accurately report the biology, so let’s just say that over a period of time we observed that the caterpillar built a cocoon, and we were lucky enough to notice the Luna Moth as it was emerging from the cocoon. The image can be found at the following link.

To understand why the ending of this story is funny to our family I have to take a brief moment to describe the environment Ann and John grew up in. To put it simply, we had fun pretending that we were quirky demented humans. For example

1. Our favorite movies were Addams Family, and Addams Family Values.
2. Our favorite movie quote is “Are there real Girl Scouts in your Girl Scout Cookies?”
3. We kept hermit crabs and worms for pets.
4. I taught the kids that to survive scary movies it is best to root for the monsters to kill more humans.

That was Ann and John’s home environment.

Back to the Luna Moth – I asked the kids if they wanted to keep the moth in the bug box over a period of days, whereupon it would die, or set the moth free, knowing full well from all too many nature shows that the moth is still likely to die. The kids chose to set the moth free.

We went out to the driveway with the bug box and prepared to free the moth. There was a blue jay sitting on the peak of the garage roof and I pointed him out to the kids. I told the kids “I think moths are generally out at night. I am not sure what this moth is going to do when it is released in the middle of the day. That blue jay is just sitting there as if he is waiting for lunch, but this moth is likely to get eaten by some predator sooner or later anyway, so let’s give it a go.” I opened the box, pulled the moth out, and he began to fly away.

The problem was the moth was flying straight and steady right down the driveway in wide open terrain headed for the street and not for the cover of trees and bushes. I called out a warning. “Guys, this doesn’t look good. He’s not flying erratically like moths and butterflies are supposed to do. That blue jay is bound to see him and nail him for lunch!”

I tried to prepare Ann and John just in case the worst happened. I wasn’t sure how they would react to seeing their moth killed right in front of them. It was one thing to see death on TV nature shows. It was another thing to see it firsthand.

Sure enough, the blue jay launched off the peak of the roof and headed straight for the Luna Moth who was still flying straight as an arrow. The blue jay looked like a fighter jet compared to the slow moving moth and nailed him in midair. We all yelled “OH” in sympathy upon the impact and watched the blue jay take the moth into the Yoshino Cherry tree next to the driveway. Not wishing to be cruel and insensitive, but also wishing to impress upon the kids that this was the way of the natural world, I knelt down, hugged the kids close, and laughed the way you laugh when the asshole lawyer gets eaten by the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

We all laughed as if we were watching a horror movie. It was either laugh or cry. Somewhere hidden in the leaves of the tree was a blue jay who was pulling the body parts off of a Luna Moth. All we could see were the moth’s body parts falling out of the mass of leaves. The first body parts to fall to the ground were the wings, and then came the legs. Eventually the body parts quit falling, and we imagined the blue jay gulping down what was left.

When it was over I did NOT say “Don’t tell Mom.” This time it was okay to tell mom. I mustered up as much enthusiasm as I could and said, “Guys, you gotta tell Mom what just happened. That was awesome!” They ran into the house and told Mom (Jean) the story in great detail.


We love remembering and retelling that story. It remains a primary piece of our family lore. We were at our quirky demented best that day. Maybe you had to be there.

Jerks

Here is another lecture from the lifetime series that I’ve inflicted on my kids. They thought the lectures would end when they left home for college. The lectures actually never end. My grandmother still lectured my father when he was in his 50’s. There is always one more thing you wish you’d told your kids.

………………………………….

A man got fired at work this week. He was competent at his job, but he ticked people off. He was brusque. He annoyed people by not taking their concerns seriously. He talked, but he didn't listen.

I've been to a lot of conferences over the years and repeatedly I've heard the sentiment that "You get hired for what you know. You get fired for who you are." This man got fired for who he was. I’ve seen the truth of this statement repeatedly throughout my 40 years in the work force.

It is critical that you be a pleasant and sociable human being. It doesn't matter how good you are at your job if people don't like you. You cannot ignore human relations. Human relations are the most important part of any job. Employers rank the ability to get along with others in the workplace much higher than a brilliant mind and expertise. Expertise is useless if the person can't work well with others. Jerks ruin an otherwise productive workplace. Jerks are the first persons an employer looks to fire.

Don't be a jerk.


“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people” – Theodore Roosevelt