PLC Presents: 500 Club (5/27/10)

“Run!”

By: Sleep Sunshine

Your pratfalls sound on the wet pavement.

Slap, splash.  Slap, splash.  Slap.

Surrounded by trees you inhale a pine scent air-freshener with each breath.

Suck, suck…blow.  Suck, suck…blow.  Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.  Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.

Your calves burn, but you don’t stop, can’t stop, can never stop…moving.  Sweat drenches your U of I ball cap, adding to the chalky-residue of dried sweat from days, weeks, a month ago.  Soaked is your sweat-resistant (so it said on the tag when you bought it) shirt, shorts, socks.  Your New Balance cross-trainers spit water from the wet pavement into the air behind you.

Slap, splash.  Slap, splash.  Slap.

Suck, suck…blow.  Suck, suck…blow.

Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.

Where are you going?  What are you doing?  What are you running from?

It’s your birthday.  Today’s your birthday.  May 27, 2010.  Thirty-one years old.  Today.

“Hi, Mrs. Robinson!”

The old woman pauses, mail partially-birthed from mailbox.  “Damn, Christopher, boy; ain’t you just the runnin’ fool.”

Is that what you are?  That all you’ve become?  In thirty-one years of life?

A runnin’ fool.

School’s out, say a prayer, say a prayer; Jeff Watkins has become someone else’s headache now, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus; your Summer stretches out before your eyes; you can do anything, be anybody in the next three months, anything at all.

Listless days toward the end of the semester when your juvenile delinquents (many of them already, the rest of them on their way to the coronation) goofed their state-mandated tests (many of the ones who bother to answer the questions at all subscribe to the Jeff Watkins’s conspiracy theory that the government, the White Man–you included or excluded, you’re not sure–tries to “make them a fool” by making every answer B) you lounged at your desk, shoes on the aluminum, staring out the window at Mr. Johnson clipping the bushes and struggling the school’s relic mower across the grass, making a mental to-do list for your Summer.

1) Write that novel you’ve always talked about

2) Take gramma to a Cub’s game (but she won’t go, she’ll never go, too many steps)

3) Open that E-Trade account and begin investing that money your dad left you, ‘stead of leaving it in a 1.6% savings account

4) Read one book a week from the library

5) Build that spice garden you’ve promised Nancy you’d build, now three summers in a row

6) Take the CPR class at the fire station

7) Make a baby

The list of possibilities stretch as long as Tila Fredericks eye-lashes, long as Milton Swinger’s corn-rows, long as Dunta Henderson’s political aspirations, long as Mark Nelson’s rap sheet, limitless as Phil Robbins earning potential.

So far, you’re accomplishments are as meager as Sam Daviduke’s future unemployment check, meager as Sylina Gutierez’s chances not to have three babies before turning eighteen, meager as the White Man‘s shot to keep Edgar Martinez down.

So far all you’ve managed is:

9) Become a runnin’ fool

You take a left onto Fell Boulevard, punching your fists into the air, lifting your knees to climb, climb Fell Hill.  Sweats a sheen on your skin, a exo-exo-dermis, telling the world, like Mrs. Robinson right away realized.  Damn, Christopher, boy; ain’t you just the runnin’ fool!

Your heart rate is up.  Your heart rate is up.  You check the monitor around your wrist.  165.  You’re okay.  You are…moving.

Back at home Nancy’s sedentary, probably making herself a ham-and-cheese, pouring a glass of lemonade, settling on your back patio, with the Times and her summer text books and spiral notebook–she’s started another Master’s program–sprinkler spitting on the grass, bees buzzing into and out-of her rose bushes.

“What are you going to do this summer?” she’d asked you, just last week.

“Haven’t thought about it, really,” you answered.  “Just enjoying not having to deal with those fucking kids.”

You’d, of course, meant it as a joke, just funnin‘ you, Mrs. O; but she hadn’t taken it that way–you can see that plain as Darius Green’s drug-addled gaze.

10) Have sex with my wife

“What?” you asked, biting into your ham-and-Havarti, though you’d decided, as you chewed in fact, that you’re going to:

11) Become a vegetarian

“Nothing, Chris.”  Nothing never means nothing; nothing always means something.  “It’s just; you talk all second semester about how much you can’t wait for summer to come, when you’ll have all this time to accomplish all these things, but then you spend the summer doing nothing, sitting around here, watching TV, napping, until about halfway through the summer you start bitching about having nothing to do and how you can’t wait for the school-year to start.”

You put your ham-and-Havarti on it’s bed of chips, determined to not pick it, or the sour cream and cheddar chips below it, up:

12)  Lose 25 pounds

“I do not.”

Nancy rolls her eyes.  “We do this every summer, too.”

“What?”

“Fight.”

13) Avoid fighting with Nancy

You pick up the ham-and-Havarti, take, into your mouth, a huge chunk of bread and pig.  You love the grainy, taste of the ham; the biting Havarti.  It’s a great combination, especially with mayo and mustard.

14) Eat whatever the fuck you want

Nancy gets up and strides down the patio stairs, avoiding the one step where the wood has rotted…

15) Fix the step where the wood has rotted

…and strides across the spotty grass…

16) Seed and irrigate the lawn, water it regularly, and mow it once a week, depending on the precipitation.

…to the bird-shaped sprinkler.  She lifts the sprinkler from behind, with the caution one might afford to a rattlesnake, and carries it across the lawn, the sprinkler head squirting and jerking in her hand, water spraying her taunt, tan calves.

17) Finally take Nancy to Rome, for the honeymoon you owe her, from six years ago

18) Get a nice base-tan on your pasty-white skin before going to Rome

19) Buy a bunch of Aloe and stick it in the fridge

Nancy returns to her seat, wipes the water and mud off her fingers and takes another bite of her sandwich, sip of her lemonade.  “In order to accomplish things, Chris, you have to make lists.”

“I do make lists.”

Long as Stephen Jackson’s fingers, Monica Potter’s stories, Brent Bryants touchdown throws.

“Not in your head.  Write them down.”

20) Write down Summer to-do list

You stare out at your backyard; she stares at her textbook, molars cracking a sour cream and cheddar chip into submission.  She’s taking notes as a hummingbird flits in front of the table, flies up to the hummingbird feeder, where it squats for a second, then flies over your hedge to Mr. Riley’s patio.

21) Put hummingbird food in the hummingbird feeder

22) Clip back the hedges that look like unkept green Afros

“Maybe I’ll start running.”

Nancy looks up dubiously, pen poised over paper.  Her eyes flit over your body, at your ” big frame”, then back to her textbook, grimacing at your cloying presence.

9) Become a runnin’ fool

“That’s what I’ll do.”  You toss the remains of your ham-and-Havarti on the plate, scattering those sour cream and cheddar chips onto the table.

23) Clean up after yourself

9) Run two miles everyday.

You jog in place, feel your heart spike into gear (what? uh, what…are…you…doing…Chris?) sweat bead at your receding hair line.

25) Go to that Boseley consultation

“I’m gonna train for a 5K.”

Nancy just stares.  She’s got a dollop of mayo on her lip.  Her eyes follow you as you job around the table, pumping your arms, thrusting your knees up; quad-fat burning you march down the stairs, so exhilarated you forget all about that rotted step.  It groans and gives out and you clip your shin on the next stair, tumble forward onto your grass, now lying sedately amongst the dandelions.

26) Weed the grass

You lay sprawled on your back, staring up at the hot sun, panting, sweating–feeling magnanimous.  Nancy leans over you, bulbous head like an eclipse-moon blocking out the sun.

“Are you all right?” she asks, amusement more than concern playing on her face.

You reach up and snag the pen behind her ear.

“Chris!”

You yank up your shirt, and on your pasty-white, hairy paunch scrawl:

9) Participate and finish the Alan High “Run for the Cheers,” 9/13.

Then you hand back her pen.  She stares at it, as though not recognizing it as a pen.

“What is wrong with you?” she asks the pen.

Slap, splash.  Slap, splash.  Suck, suck…blow.

You lock your hands behind your head and tighten your stomach muscles, perform five consecutive crunches.

“Nothing” you tell her, grunting like some cave-man warrior.  “It’s gonna be a hell of a summer!”