Half Past Awesome

No running for me, thank you very much

This time of year, Missouri lives in a cold-storage state of mind. We’re stockpiling holiday cheer and consumptive orgies for round 2, having just overindulged at Thanksgiving and lazily eyeballing the birth of Christ as personified by televisions going on sale at low, low prices. One particular day, the weather turns cold, very cold and we brace for it with ever-louder holiday music and a fondness for melted cheese dip. Belts get loosened a notch and we analyze football games on the weekend while inflatable Santas keep watch over the neglected leaves in our yards.

No wonder people hate themselves over the holidays.

We cook like the end of times is nigh, we apply subtle social pressure to one another (“hey, are you already done shopping for the kids? Bob knocked his all out  last week. What an asshole”), we pretend not to notice the wagging finger of the devout as they clamor for us to remember the Christ in Christmas, and we force smiles to one another as we anticipate yet another two weeks of our children NOT being school and tearing our homes apart all while we seethe inwardly and debate the merits of child labor laws in our minds. It is enough to make you pray to the baby Jesus in the manger to smite down the inventor of Black Friday in a righteous fury. THAT would have set the tone for history, in my opinion.

But since Jesus has not seen fit to smite down those who would program holiday music to begin the day after Halloween, I need to find other ways to avoid fits of freezing temper tantrums. Workout burnout comes quickly to the short attention spanned, and there’s something cleansing about running that even motivated me to write about it the other day (here). In this weather, though, running is pure misery, in some respects. Grown men end up wearing tights (guilty), snot meanders onto your upper lip more frequently, and it’s hard to catch your breath in cold jabs. Misery, it turns out, loves company. I know someone who I can force to run with me, even on those days when my runner-wife decides she can’t bear to watch my painful loping: the dog.

He’s been signed up to run the Frosty Paws 5k with me on December 10, and he didn’t even sign a consent form. To be fair to the poor bastard, I thought he might be in need of a training run or two, since he’s been living like a damn spoiled Saudi prince at the house. That picture above? His normal workday, personified.

So we ran this morning. He was less than impressed, and after taking a prolific dump somewhere near mile one, I could tell his heart just wasn’t into it. Clearly, he was missing his daytime episodes of Animal Cops Houston and pining for another rendition of “White Christmas” to be cranked over the airwaves. With a droolish curious look on his mug, he trotted alongside me full of the attitude you’d expect from a teenager, only to be excited by the taunts of random squirrels and the chance to pee on new trees. That’s ok….if I’m going to have festive cheer foisted upon me, he’s going to have cold runs forced upon him in anticipation of a race in a few weeks. It’s the holidays, dammit. Show some spirit.

The Dad We Wish We Had On Turkey Day

You know, we have so much to be thankful for, you and I.

If you’re reading this, you have access to the internet, which means you’re not spending you time hunting down raccoons for a meal. Likely you have a roof over your head, the ability to live outside of the yoke of an oppressive regime in the heat of the Middle East and enough money to buy that latte you’re drinking at Starbucks with your Power Mac laptop which is how you stumbled across this page.

As a cynical raconteur and avowed skeptic, I find it easy to take the “not only is the glass half empty, it’s cracked and leaking but I’m too lazy to do anything about it except complain to no one in particular” approach. On a related note, this is precisely why I’d make a crappy religious zealot; I wouldn’t believe myself most of the time. I could stand to be a little less jaded, I suppose, a little peppier when I get into a fender bender, a few more “woo-hoo’s” at CrossFit when I see someone skipping rope really, really fast. And truly, in this life, there is so much for which to be grateful.

• The unconditional love your children have for you (at least before their age gets into the double digits)
• The way in which your dog acts upon your return home, even if you were only gone for 5 minutes; the maniacal tail (or nub) wagging, the eyes, casting about wildly, the incessant pawing. You’ll always be the biggest celebrity in your dog’s world.
• Waking up in a country where you can be as free as you’d like. Free to be informed, free to be ignorant, but most importantly, free to be.
• Thermostats in the winter, and the ability to use them.
• Enough leisure time on our hands that we pay the Kardashians of this world exorbitant sums to basically live in front of cameras and date/marry professional athletes at their casual will.
• We can choose to run for health or sport as opposed to running for our lives from a pride of hungry lions with low blood-sugar issues.
• When Wall Street’s greediest chowderheads choose to abscond with others money, and our faith in man falters, we still forgive our neighbor for running over our garbage cans or that jerk who swiped your parking space….we forgive him too. Or we oughta.
• A well stocked liquor store on virtually every corner. Turns out, that’s quite handy.
• Family. Even the one’s you’re not talking to right now.
• Friends. Even the one’s who won’t talk to you right now.
• A house to clean. Laundry that needs to be done, because that means you’re still needed for more than just operating the dishwasher.
• Want bacon? Go buy bacon. Want a big-screen tv? Go buy one. Wanna meet a disease-infested tranny hooker in a park after hours? Go to Craigslist. My point? We don’t lack for much, except for an appreciation for what’s in front of us.

And I may well be the worst when it comes to a basic appreciation…..but not today. So thank you, one and all, for mostly just being you; friend or foe, you’re shaping the landscape of this life for me, and I’m grateful for the challenges and gifts of this life. I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled pessimism soon enough, but today, I’m just thankful.

I was runnnnning....

Pad, pad, pad, pad, pad, pad, gravel-crunching halt as I wait for the turkeys to pass, they who look at me as the fool for running in the rain. Pad, pad, pad, pad, a moment of self doubt as I painfully lurch up a hill, then careen down some slippery wet rocks, envisioning being found in a broken heap three days later, mostly eaten by gloating turkeys, pad pad, pad, pad, pad……….release.

Runners as a group intrigue and irritate me all at once. They are a cult of ghosts, sometimes whispering by you alone as you walk down a trail, sometimes loudly clanging cow bells at organized events, where despite truckloads of bagels and bananas, everyone looks emaciated. The purists look down their noses at everyone, the uninitiated have gaits that are apparently horrendous, and I still can’t get a read on why anyone thinks the actual running is “fun”. Here’s what I HAVE learned, though….running accomplishes two things for me:

1. If I ever want to cut weight, there’s no more surefire way than to take up running, preferably longer distances than from the kitchen table to the fire truck.
2. The release of endorphins, the purging of mental toxins, the ability to converse with the voices in my head, the mindless and fruitful flights of the creative side of life, all of these take place as I lumber through parks and trails and neighborhoods, one pathetic mile at a time.

I have no desire to run competitively in a long distance capacity. I’d like to try a half or whole marathon once, just so I can put a sticker on my car and act all elite and shit, but truth be told, competing in that arena requires a discipline and lack of body fat to which I’m not really ready to commit. So it’s like I casually date running, we hook up when it’s not hockey night or CrossFit isn’t happening, and while I always feel good afterwards, I’m still not in love enough to actually become a runner. The Wife, however, has; she completed a half-marathon this past weekend, an accomplishment for which I want to kill her out of envy and beam with pride, in equal amounts. She now subscribes to Running Runner or some other such magazine where I am to understand they tell the reader to run and rest and eat. In that order.

So as I went running by the turkeys the other morning, it served meaning for me. Running alone in the rain is an act of purification and rare joyous solitude. Scrambling over wet rocks and avoiding getting clubbed by bounding deer keeps me on my toes, a crossword puzzle of the legs and lungs. As well, there are people and events taking up space in my mind, squatters, really, who aren’t paying rent. They are of no consequence in the big picture, so of course, I give them way too much time and effort. Negative, hateful and judgmental as hell, I’d normally admire these qualities and insist that we be the best of friends, but such isn’t the case. No amount of staring at blank pieces of paper, willing art to come forth, or essays to be written can take place when I’m allowing the monkeys in my brain access to pipe wrenches and pots & pans. They, the events, the people, the mayhem, needed to be evicted. Right there on the trail.

That happens at mile #2. Mile 2 is where notice is served, and the mind begins to take back what belongs to it, the monkeys get crammed back into cages and mayhem is mitigated into controlled chaos…

Shit shouldn’t be happening to me like this, says the mayhem.

Sure it should, says the running mind. Life isn’t about being fair, or easy, or how YOU want it to turn out.

Mayhem says it doesn’t work like this.

Sure it does, say the miles. Your script matters not, but guess, what? THIS is life. It IS supposed to work out like this, and you’re just a bit player, a stand-in. Now, watch out for that branch, it’s gonna clean smack you in the face.

Mayhem begins to lose control of the conversation, and outwardly, I smile. Grinning like an idiot at the turkeys and the deer and the jittery squirrel, who eyes me uneasily, I smile. This is that moment. This is why some people run. In the confines of conversations of the mind, this is what I seek. Time to once again be landlord of my own mind. Running as church.

Balance will be restored. It may not be of your design, but you’ll survive. Life isn’t a sticom, nor a rom-com, nor a Shakespearean endeavor. It is what it is, and you’re a part of it. Open the door; let the assholes out and the sunshine in.

As rain and sweat and tears all mingled freely across my face and down the trail, I realized that despite low miles, a disparaging lack of consistency and a body more suited to hockey than distance mileage, I am, in fact, something of a runner.

How Ed Did

It started out, as it always does, with little fanfare.

Another day on duty at the fire station, the usual foot traffic behind us, heading to or from the Brown Derby liquor store or the grocery store or the local AA club, located two doors down from the liquor store. The players change, but the plot never does. Many of our 911 calls center around the needs of the homeless, and they utilize the 911 system with a frightening efficiency. They know the ins & outs of how to get the fire department there right away, and as such, we often get to know them on a personal basis. We develop dysfunctional relationships with them, us being referred to as “hey fireMAN” and they by their nicknames or street monikers. Some are funny, many are violent, most are in a depressing state of being. Our people are a colorful, crazy lot, and as I tell each rookie who does a rotation with us, “don’t look down your nose at anybody. We miss two paychecks and we’re right there with them.”

SO, we have a new man about town in our ‘hood, he a peddler of ladies delights. While he’s never come right out and SAID that he’s a pimp, we can watch his moves from the station and it’s pretty clear he’s not selling vacuums door to door. The giveaway, however, is his telltale dollar-bill-sign hat that he usually wears, cocked at an angle. This gentleman is in his fifties, I’d guess, and working the hustle to make it. He’s always friendly and polite to us, often gets into shouting matches with unseen adversaries near the dumpster behind our firehouse. We’ve made runs on his lady friends, and he always seems irked when one of his employees is off the clock.

Our new friend made his way into the engine bay the other day and loudly proclaimed: “exCUSE me!?! Could I get some help here?” My hands were literally full at that moment, so the other engineer handled the situation. It went down something like this:

“How can I help you sir?”

“Well, I ain’t gonna lie; me an’ my ol’ lady, we been drinkin’ vodka again. Her knee is all kinds of messed up.”

“Oh, I see. Would you like me to get an ambulance headed this way?”

“I didn’t SAY that. I just said, we been drinkin’. She might need some he’p. With her knee.”

“Not a problem, I’ll just grab our medical equipment.”

“Hold on…..”

(-intended break here. THIS is where it got interesting. HE is in our engine bay, SHE is about fifty feet away in the alley. SHE is the injured one. WE have no problem heading to her and rendering assistance. But HE isn’t having any of that foolishness.  HE needs to demonstrate that he’s the top cock in the henhouse, and that shit ain’t happenin’. So, he turns and (with dramatic pause) hollers out -)

“WOMAN!!! BRIIIING yo’ ASSSS!”

At this point, my co-worker likely pissed himself. He couldn’t laugh; not only would this be unprofessional, it would be a direct assault on the pimp’s self esteem. This was HIS time. HIS woman. He was proving to us that HE and HE ALONE ran this show. She, of course, obliged and zombie-dragged herself up to us, where my partner offered what he could: little more than consolation for an unseen and undiagnosable ailment. How can you treat a problem that refuses to be recognized? You give emotional support, directions to the ER (totally unnecessary, in Dolla’ Bill’s eyes) and hope for the best, knowing that you’ll see each other soon enough, when the alcohol leads to further bad situations. We take it for what it’s worth, smiling all the while.

Plus, he gave us the phrase of the week, one which we flogged to death around the station; ordering people to the kitchen, ordering people on to the rigs, ordering one another to change the channels on the television. As was told to me by the same co-worker “ain’t no conscience in the pimp game, fool.”

Love them or hate them, the characters of Commercial Street are what color the fabric of our life in the firehouse. I’d rather work nowhere else in the city, for these are our people. They bring meaning to our jobs. They keep us all human. And they know that day or night (usually late at night) they can call us, and that we will, indeed, bring our asses.