I’d like to report that last week was another busy, busy week at the Polygon.
So, I will: last week was another busy week at the Polygon.
Amidst the flurry of all of things industrious, I discerned or at least imagined a theme to some of the week’s adventures: BOTHER. One event was a fairly severe bother, on order of a coup, the second a minor comeuppance, and the third, basically just an indecency.
FIRST: Tri-Ark Take Over
Tri-Ark quietly but officially took over trash collection in our sector. And Bill and I didn’t get quite the reaction we expected out of Ishmael.
You see, on Tuesday, the multi-lingual Tri-Ark ladies stopped Slim and Bill in the hallway just outside out office and asked them if our trash had been taken care of. Ishmael had already come, and my two compadres tried to make it clear to the ladies that we already had a perfectly good trash man, capable and punctual (lately, anyway).
Wednesday, however, a mousey Tri-Ark lady came ringing our doorbell at 11:30 AM. Pretty early for trash call, we thought. Upon heaving herself and her giant trashcanonwheels through our behemoth door, she just stood there. Barely taller than the receptacle she carted, she simply chirped: “Trash? Trash? Trash?”
“Yep, we’ve got trash… here,” either Bill or I said (I get us confused sometimes) as we put our cans out flush with the end of our cubicle row. She eventually got the picture and came over to collect what little trash we had. Pretty early for trash call!
Before long she had collected the other two cans worth and courageously hoisted our door open to go on her way, conducting her unwitting land grab operation in the larger campaign known to us as The Trash War.
Not much later, our doorbell rang again, and just before we pushed the button to unlock the door, Bill and I both hollered for all the world to hear (which actually only included one other person):
“Ohhhhh, man… I’ll bet this is Ishmael”
“He is going to be fuhr-ree-yus…!”
“Hi, Ishmael! …Somebody already came to collect our trash.”
“Whah? You no have tradsh?”
“No… uh… who were they… Tri-Ark. Yeah, Tri-Ark. They already came by… about 45 minutes ago.”
“Whoo?”
“Yeah, Tri-Ark. Do you want me to call your supervisor so we can straighten this out?” Bill – ever Mr. Nice Guy – offered. And he did.
Well, the lady at the other end of the phone in very few words told Bill to relay to Ishmael that she had another route for him.
Bill and I, we were a little sad, actually… sort of. I mean this was our trash guy after all: the man who saved us from smelling banana peels and being overcome by lunch wrappers. The importance of his role and our extreme gratitude should not be downplayed.
We asked Ishmael if maybe he would come back and visit sometime – you know, just to say ‘hello,’ just so we could hear his verbal tirade about Bill not coming to work (which he actually rarely missed) or rail about the Redskins, smell his musky cologne, and watch him manhandle an ill-fitting plastic bag around a wastepaper basket with the grace and precision of a Marine with his rifle.
With merely a chuckle, Ishmael left quietly with a slightly bowed head.
Sigh. Truly, the end of an era.
SECOND: Sour Cleaner
At the risk of further demystifying the great American icon that is the Polygon, I will tell you that this place, like Triangle, NJ, Washington Square, Dupont Circle, and all other great places named after shapes is actually a slice of America, just like anywhere else. We have a post office, a shoe shine, a Starbucks, a Dunkin, a Popeye's, a florist, and just about any other retail store you can imagine – we just got a Best Buy! And, oh yes, our dry cleaning shop is run by Korean-Americans. It’s great! They do a fantastic job.
On Thursday, I went to pick up my dry-cleaning, and the woman who usually works the counter was perched upon her usual stool, legs crossed, with her usual sour-puss look on her face – not because she was sour; that’s just her look. Or so I thought.
This day, she actually was sour -- and with good reason.
Two men were standing immediately in front of her counter, yapping like they were at their goddamn high school reunion, just yak yak yaking away, oblivious… totally Oh-blivious to the world going on around them. I approached the counter and awkwardly reached around them to turn in my slip to get my dry-cleaning. Sour-puss stool-percher huffily waited on me at the opposite register, about five feet away from the garrulous gentlemen.
I smiled, thanked her, paid my seven oh five, and she either must have caught my sidelong glances inquiring “W-T-F is up with them?” or was just at the end of her wit’s end rope. As she gave me my change, she made sock puppet gestures with her hands and said “Tir-tee minutes… tir-tee minutes they talk like that! Grrrrrrr-uh!”
For some reason I tried to apologize for them, if only because I was wearing the same color uniform, making me somehow complicit. And I sidled away, back down to my little cave, away from this bother.
THIRD: Hamming the Pine
Now this last bother is not something that happened to me personally, but rather was relayed to me by my cohort Bill during one of his many adventures in the Polygon Athletic Center. Some creative and idle PowerPoint Ranger has captured similar indecencies in the men’s locker in stick figure cartoon form which I am afraid I lack the technology to attach, but I would happily send to anyone who sends me his/her email address. I am warning you. They are FUNNY!! Our absolute favorite is called “Hamming the Pine.” …picture an innocent bench being smothered by someone’s ham hock.
The one that is not there, however, is one that Bill was subjected to last week. As he was trying to dry his hands, he nearly groped a bottomless dude blow-drying his hair with the hand dryer. I suppose I don’t need to mention that these dryers are installed at hand/waist - not at neck/head - level. Ewwwwwww!
After relaying this story to me, he asked if we have similar shenanigans in the women’s locker room.
“We most certainly do NOT.” I told him. “We have couches, big roomy lockers, perfumed toilets—”
“And tickle fights in every corner,” he chimed in. Exactly.
“So you’ve been there?” Hmmm. I didn’t have to explain a thing -- which was, refreshingly, no bother at all.
15 December 2009
01 December 2009
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 24): Trash Talk
In my little slice of the Polygon, trash collection has always been a bit of a theatrical production.
Back when I first started working down here, everyday at more or less three o’clock, our doorbell would ring and in would roll – literally roll – a man whom here I'll call Ishmael, the Trash Guy.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we’d all stop what we were doing, get up out of our chairs like prairie dogs answering a call, and bring our wastebaskets to the front of the room where he was waiting, beckoning for our trash as though he were hawking peanuts at a baseball game.
As we’d bring him our cans and dump our refuse in his giant rolling bin, he’d heckle us:
“Where you been? …I not see you yestaday… you come to work?”
“No man! I was here,” my cohort would say. “I see you coming, I run.”
“Ahhh, ha ha ha ha… you not work enough! …here , here, you need new bag?”
“No thanks, I’m good. You gave me one yesterday. This one’s still clean.”
“Ahhh, s’clean? Okay, maybe too-morrow… maybe if you come to work… I be here!”
“Okay! Bye Ishmael, you take care!”
“Okay … Bye!” And out he rolled.
Peace was upon us once again.
When a new fellow took charge of our office, he started to question things: the way things were run, the way paperwork was routed, and his chief complaint with the status quo was the daily “Trash Call” ballet.
As it happened, about mid-summer, the trash collection ceased to be so regular. Maybe this was because it was, well, mid-summer in DC, when everything slows down because Congress is not in session. So why not trash pick-up? In fact one week, there was no pick-up at all. The following couple of weeks we only saw good Ishmael once, maybe twice. When he did, he’d even more vociferously complain that we weren’t in when he came a’ ringin’ – slim chance, seeing that rarely were all five of us out of the office.
Summer fruit and other lunch particles got a little smelly after a couple of days, so I did some research and found the right person to complain to – not any easy job in the Polygon, mind you.
The very next day Ishmael returned, angry… angry that we had complained to his supervisor that he had not come. “Why you call? Why you call and get me in trouble!”
He felt betrayed.
Hell, we just wanted our trash collected. What happened to that nice little prairie dog, peanut hawking system we had working so smoothly before?
I don’t know. But it was gone. Trust was broken. And our relationship would never be the same.
As I mentioned before, the new fellow – let’s call him “Slim” – thought the whole ballet was absurd and, undoubtedly beneath him, even though he said that it certainly wasn’t beneath him to dump his own trash can into the big refuse bucket at the beck and call of a small man with a heavy accent. Slim did some reading – which is not saying anything new; Slim was always reading.
Anyway, Slim did some reading up on the Polygon trash rules and contracts. “You know,” he started in with us, trying to gather allies, “you know… we don’t have to bring our trash to him.” Slim started speaking in a hushed tone, leaning forward and tapping his fingers together. “By his contract, he is supposed to go around to each desk and pick up our wastebasket and dump it himself. He is supposed to go around to everyone’s desk and quietly pick up and dispose of our trash. None of this ‘Trash Call!’ baloney!” he concluded as he waved his hand in disgust.
“I am going to talk to him about it tomorrow,” Slim continued, “or the next time he comes in here, and remind him what his contract says… let him know that I know what it says… that we know what it says...”
“Sure, okay,” one of us assented.
“Yeah, whatever, I don’t have a problem with that,” another agreed.
“Yeah, I did feel kind of silly pandering to him, parading my trash,” I added.
Loaf was out, so he didn’t get a vote.
The very next day I think it was, at some inconsistent time (he had long since ceased to be punctual), Ishmael rolled in.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we all just sat there.
All of us except, of course, Slim.
He came out of his office, strode to the door and asked Ishmael if he could have a word with him outside.
We all slunk in our desks and stared straight ahead, like kids or puppies would when they know that someone else is getting yelled at, however more culpable that pitiable creature may be.
In a couple of minutes (Man, that was a good long ass-chewing!), they both came back in the room. We had all since pulled our wastebaskets out from under our desks and had positioned them at the corner of each cubicle row as Slim had instructed us to: the proper post for the new “Trash Call.”
And Ishmael quietly rolled around the room, picking up each wastebasket in turn with his grubby grippy-palmed gardening gloves, softly dumping each one into the big bin.
Then he somberly rolled out… a beaten man… a shadow of his former self.
Ishmael has never missed a day of trash pick up since. Each day he has quietly rolled in and dutifully collected and dumped each of our cans. It is with no small amount of gladness, however, that I note that as the weeks and months have elapsed since his Trash Talk with Slim, Ishmael has gotten progressively more chipper, even a little bit flippant, insulting the Redskins, questioning everyone’s whereabouts, taking attendance… but nothing like the revelry of old.
But last week… Last week, things got pretty silly again.
Late Monday afternoon, a different trash guy rolled in. This new garbage guy was jovial enough, but sort of struck me as a little creepy. Not sure just what it was, the crazy fly away hair-do, the apron askew, the unusually ruddy complexion… no, this was a trash collector after all. I didn’t expect him to abide by regulation grooming standards.
He came over to where Bill and I were seated, to pick up the wastebaskets posted at the edge of our cubicles. And he stood there, rather ceremoniously, waiting to be noticed or at the very least humored. Being a couple of days before Thanksgiving, we humored him. “Hey, what’s your favorite color?” he asked me.
“Blue,” I answered quickly, wondering if I was going to be summarily ejected from my chair and shot through the ceiling if I prevaricated like a Monty Python character.
“Well, I’ve got… this color!” It wasn’t blue. It was purple. A purple bead necklace.
Creepy!
I started to get backflashes – I mean flashbacks – of acts of Mardi Gras I’d never even performed … what did this guy want?
“Here, I will give you this one and this one!” he bubbled with glee as he pulled gold and a purple bead necklaces from his apron pouch.
Yes, I am fully aware of how creepy this sounds – try living it.
Bill likewise looked on uncomfortably. What did this guy want me to do with this crap? I was in uniform… I certainly wasn’t going to wear them, let alone reveal something for them.
So, I smiled and thanked him. After all, I didn’t want to be mean.
After he left, I picked the bead necklaces up with just two fingers and put them on Slim’s desk.
When he returned from lunch, he asked me what they were for and what did I do to get them. We chuckled about that, and as I was shuddering at the thought, he hung them on a thumbtack on my cubicle.
Just looking at them out of the corner of my eye kind gave me a sour taste in my throat … like I was tasting garbage… all of those places the beads had been… all of those other trash cans… all of the rolling barrels and bins and dumpsters those things must have seen.
Creepy!
I threw them in my garbage can.
Then Tuesday came. No Ishmael. It was crazy BeadBoy again.
Quick! I had to pull my beads from the trash… and hide them… so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings, but also so that he wouldn’t see them and remember our sentimental exchange.
Fortunately for me and all things mannerly, he was distracted, some might say downright lathered up. The sky was falling. He asked to borrow our phone.
“Sure!” I told him while I furtively guarded the area around my trash can.
“Which one…?????”
“Oh, you can use that one. No one uses that desk.” I offered Loaf’s old phone.
He picked up the handset and dialed his supervisor:
“Hey! I’m doing Ishmael’s route … Tri-Ark is down here trying to pull trash. There are three people from Tri-Ark just telling me they took the floor over.”
[Oh no! Say it isn’t so! The much feared trash wars have begun!]
“There are 3 people from Tri-Ark telling me they got an email to take over…”
[Not this turf… what’s Ishmael going to think? Hardly the Thanksgiving sprit!]
“I can skip this area?”
“The ones I pulled yesterday, I can still pull, right?”
“And the 92 I can get… and the whole hallway is gone to them”
“Okay, I’ll commence.” He hangs up.
“You’re lucky,” he assures us. “You’re on the route. This takes about ten rooms off of the list. I just talked to the assistant general manager. You’re on the list. You’re lucky. I can still pull you guys.”
Yeah, real lucky. Now you’re talkin’!
Back when I first started working down here, everyday at more or less three o’clock, our doorbell would ring and in would roll – literally roll – a man whom here I'll call Ishmael, the Trash Guy.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we’d all stop what we were doing, get up out of our chairs like prairie dogs answering a call, and bring our wastebaskets to the front of the room where he was waiting, beckoning for our trash as though he were hawking peanuts at a baseball game.
As we’d bring him our cans and dump our refuse in his giant rolling bin, he’d heckle us:
“Where you been? …I not see you yestaday… you come to work?”
“No man! I was here,” my cohort would say. “I see you coming, I run.”
“Ahhh, ha ha ha ha… you not work enough! …here , here, you need new bag?”
“No thanks, I’m good. You gave me one yesterday. This one’s still clean.”
“Ahhh, s’clean? Okay, maybe too-morrow… maybe if you come to work… I be here!”
“Okay! Bye Ishmael, you take care!”
“Okay … Bye!” And out he rolled.
Peace was upon us once again.
When a new fellow took charge of our office, he started to question things: the way things were run, the way paperwork was routed, and his chief complaint with the status quo was the daily “Trash Call” ballet.
As it happened, about mid-summer, the trash collection ceased to be so regular. Maybe this was because it was, well, mid-summer in DC, when everything slows down because Congress is not in session. So why not trash pick-up? In fact one week, there was no pick-up at all. The following couple of weeks we only saw good Ishmael once, maybe twice. When he did, he’d even more vociferously complain that we weren’t in when he came a’ ringin’ – slim chance, seeing that rarely were all five of us out of the office.
Summer fruit and other lunch particles got a little smelly after a couple of days, so I did some research and found the right person to complain to – not any easy job in the Polygon, mind you.
The very next day Ishmael returned, angry… angry that we had complained to his supervisor that he had not come. “Why you call? Why you call and get me in trouble!”
He felt betrayed.
Hell, we just wanted our trash collected. What happened to that nice little prairie dog, peanut hawking system we had working so smoothly before?
I don’t know. But it was gone. Trust was broken. And our relationship would never be the same.
As I mentioned before, the new fellow – let’s call him “Slim” – thought the whole ballet was absurd and, undoubtedly beneath him, even though he said that it certainly wasn’t beneath him to dump his own trash can into the big refuse bucket at the beck and call of a small man with a heavy accent. Slim did some reading – which is not saying anything new; Slim was always reading.
Anyway, Slim did some reading up on the Polygon trash rules and contracts. “You know,” he started in with us, trying to gather allies, “you know… we don’t have to bring our trash to him.” Slim started speaking in a hushed tone, leaning forward and tapping his fingers together. “By his contract, he is supposed to go around to each desk and pick up our wastebasket and dump it himself. He is supposed to go around to everyone’s desk and quietly pick up and dispose of our trash. None of this ‘Trash Call!’ baloney!” he concluded as he waved his hand in disgust.
“I am going to talk to him about it tomorrow,” Slim continued, “or the next time he comes in here, and remind him what his contract says… let him know that I know what it says… that we know what it says...”
“Sure, okay,” one of us assented.
“Yeah, whatever, I don’t have a problem with that,” another agreed.
“Yeah, I did feel kind of silly pandering to him, parading my trash,” I added.
Loaf was out, so he didn’t get a vote.
The very next day I think it was, at some inconsistent time (he had long since ceased to be punctual), Ishmael rolled in.
“TDRASH COLL … TDRASH!”
And we all just sat there.
All of us except, of course, Slim.
He came out of his office, strode to the door and asked Ishmael if he could have a word with him outside.
We all slunk in our desks and stared straight ahead, like kids or puppies would when they know that someone else is getting yelled at, however more culpable that pitiable creature may be.
In a couple of minutes (Man, that was a good long ass-chewing!), they both came back in the room. We had all since pulled our wastebaskets out from under our desks and had positioned them at the corner of each cubicle row as Slim had instructed us to: the proper post for the new “Trash Call.”
And Ishmael quietly rolled around the room, picking up each wastebasket in turn with his grubby grippy-palmed gardening gloves, softly dumping each one into the big bin.
Then he somberly rolled out… a beaten man… a shadow of his former self.
Ishmael has never missed a day of trash pick up since. Each day he has quietly rolled in and dutifully collected and dumped each of our cans. It is with no small amount of gladness, however, that I note that as the weeks and months have elapsed since his Trash Talk with Slim, Ishmael has gotten progressively more chipper, even a little bit flippant, insulting the Redskins, questioning everyone’s whereabouts, taking attendance… but nothing like the revelry of old.
But last week… Last week, things got pretty silly again.
Late Monday afternoon, a different trash guy rolled in. This new garbage guy was jovial enough, but sort of struck me as a little creepy. Not sure just what it was, the crazy fly away hair-do, the apron askew, the unusually ruddy complexion… no, this was a trash collector after all. I didn’t expect him to abide by regulation grooming standards.
He came over to where Bill and I were seated, to pick up the wastebaskets posted at the edge of our cubicles. And he stood there, rather ceremoniously, waiting to be noticed or at the very least humored. Being a couple of days before Thanksgiving, we humored him. “Hey, what’s your favorite color?” he asked me.
“Blue,” I answered quickly, wondering if I was going to be summarily ejected from my chair and shot through the ceiling if I prevaricated like a Monty Python character.
“Well, I’ve got… this color!” It wasn’t blue. It was purple. A purple bead necklace.
Creepy!
I started to get backflashes – I mean flashbacks – of acts of Mardi Gras I’d never even performed … what did this guy want?
“Here, I will give you this one and this one!” he bubbled with glee as he pulled gold and a purple bead necklaces from his apron pouch.
Yes, I am fully aware of how creepy this sounds – try living it.
Bill likewise looked on uncomfortably. What did this guy want me to do with this crap? I was in uniform… I certainly wasn’t going to wear them, let alone reveal something for them.
So, I smiled and thanked him. After all, I didn’t want to be mean.
After he left, I picked the bead necklaces up with just two fingers and put them on Slim’s desk.
When he returned from lunch, he asked me what they were for and what did I do to get them. We chuckled about that, and as I was shuddering at the thought, he hung them on a thumbtack on my cubicle.
Just looking at them out of the corner of my eye kind gave me a sour taste in my throat … like I was tasting garbage… all of those places the beads had been… all of those other trash cans… all of the rolling barrels and bins and dumpsters those things must have seen.
Creepy!
I threw them in my garbage can.
Then Tuesday came. No Ishmael. It was crazy BeadBoy again.
Quick! I had to pull my beads from the trash… and hide them… so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings, but also so that he wouldn’t see them and remember our sentimental exchange.
Fortunately for me and all things mannerly, he was distracted, some might say downright lathered up. The sky was falling. He asked to borrow our phone.
“Sure!” I told him while I furtively guarded the area around my trash can.
“Which one…?????”
“Oh, you can use that one. No one uses that desk.” I offered Loaf’s old phone.
He picked up the handset and dialed his supervisor:
“Hey! I’m doing Ishmael’s route … Tri-Ark is down here trying to pull trash. There are three people from Tri-Ark just telling me they took the floor over.”
[Oh no! Say it isn’t so! The much feared trash wars have begun!]
“There are 3 people from Tri-Ark telling me they got an email to take over…”
[Not this turf… what’s Ishmael going to think? Hardly the Thanksgiving sprit!]
“I can skip this area?”
“The ones I pulled yesterday, I can still pull, right?”
“And the 92 I can get… and the whole hallway is gone to them”
“Okay, I’ll commence.” He hangs up.
“You’re lucky,” he assures us. “You’re on the route. This takes about ten rooms off of the list. I just talked to the assistant general manager. You’re on the list. You’re lucky. I can still pull you guys.”
Yeah, real lucky. Now you’re talkin’!
24 November 2009
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 23): Loafing Around
Greetings, Sports Fans!
I know, I know … I have been very remiss, negligent, and otherwise incommunicable on this blog for the past several months.
For this I apologize. My excuse? -- for I believe that every good omission bears an even better explanation… my excuse is that I have been somewhat suppressing my own writerly voice for the sake of my principal. I am trying to break free and split my personality like the good Gemini that I am, though. I finally think I’ve done it.
Yesterday while jamming to Sublime at the gym, I realized that doing so is all about being carefree when you can and serious when you must.
So, here goes. I am back.
We did have quite a bit of drama at the Polygon this summer and I have only recently recovered my wits and patience enough to put pen to paper, or fingers to qwerty as the case may more ineloquently be.
The Drama Mama’s name was Loaf – or so we dubbed him on account of his… well, I won’t get ahead of myself.
Sometime in July, Loaf literally came a-knockin’ on our door, inquiring if we had a position for a writer available.
No, we didn’t.
He had been “let go” from his previous job (read FIRED) because he couldn’t/wouldn’t write what his principal wanted to say.
Before we even got to know him, when an event our Boss was supposed to do got deferred to his, we used to casually joke, “Better wake up Loaf!” – only we used his real name back then because we hadn’t yet been subjected to his nasty habit that earned him the Loaf moniker.
So anyway, what I am trying to say is that my partner in crime and I were a little apprehensive about his credentials.
But no one really asked us – or, if they did, they didn’t listen to us.
Within a week, there we were, giving Loaf a lair, er, a desk, briefing him on our processes, checklists and files, and instructing him how he could best help us out.
Loaf was supposed to be the laborer, the “researcher,” the look-ahead-a-few-events, read background information and suggest themes guy. Also he was supposed to make initial contact with event points of contact, maintain our tickler, build scene setters, and maintain a file of press coverage and quotations from our Boss.
Suffice it to say that he did none of these things reliably, with any consistency or without some degree of rework required. …but there I go getting ahead of myself again.
We knew the Loaf had officially landed when we saw numerous accoutrements and adornments strewn and hung about his cubicle: two framed flags from previous assignments hanging in his cubicle, a decorative mouse-pad, several “inside joke” snapshots, ten framed family pictures, and an old, mahogany, high backed leather chair in front of his desk.
W-T-F!?
Also, atop his bookshelf, there were two long, yellow “pool noodles.”
When we inquired what those were for, Loaf lipped:
“Hall jousting.”
“Hall jousting?”
“Yes, hall jousting.”
“You used to hall joust in the E-ring?”
“No, in the half-corridor outside the D-ring.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it was usually later in the afternoon, after we had already watched ‘Ellen.’”
“Hmmm. Okay. Sounds like fun.”
W-T-F??????
I could go into painful details of specific shenanigans … well, I could, but they’d be... well, painful for me and out of keeping with my new “no bad days” stress-free mentality. I'd rather not dwell on it.
Suffice it to say that the following timeline sums up his daily routine for the approximately three months he spent with us.
A Day in the Life of the Loaf:
0710 Arrive at work, hang up leather flight jacket
0730 Log onto computer, call the IT office to complain about applications not installed on computer. Demand they install them.
0750 Exchange angry, angry words with the Polygon IT help, but very gently click the receiver in its cradle when hanging up.
0751-0949 Listen to sermons in right ear while senselessly surfing the web or pretending to do work. Open the all-important tickler and lock it for editing so no one else can update it.
0950 Arise, grab gym bag and clandestinely slink out the door without talking to anyone.
1015-1035 “Work out” and take long breaks in between “sets” to chat with pretty girls
1050 Arrive back at office and wash plate for lunch
1055 Remove the most reverent 5” X 5”, 2” thick square of meat from the refrigerator
1056 Place Meatloaf in microwave oven & heat on high for 2 minutes
1059-1135 Bask in the scent of microwaved loaf, and quietly pick at lunch while listening to some more sermons
1136-1725 Peck away at the keyboard, squeak chair, casually talk to wife on the phone about son’s antics, offer bushels of acorns to co-workers, lodge a few more complaints with the Polygon IT staff and the gas company, drop the Boss’s name to get things, refer to yourself as a rank higher than you really are, berate and badger points of contact for failing to return our worksheet, and generally do whatever else it takes to be less useful while making yourself feel more important than you really are.
1726 Arise and clandestinely slink out, regretting that another day has gone by in this god-forsaken office without hall-jousting, watching “Ellen,” nor writing a single piece of purple prose.
When the lead in our office broke it to Loaf that it was time that we found him another place to work, that he should take a few days and come back on Monday, he still showed up to work the very next day. Loaf carried on with his usual mannerisms, but managed to make even less eye contact and more annoying, disruptive phone calls than usual. The image of this Loaf man reminded me of a less than endearing Bartleby the Scrivner. For those who aren’t familiar, Bartelby was a Herman Melville character who haunted an office and preferred not to do just about everything and eventually wasted away for complete lack of effort. Ah, Loaf! Ah humanity!
Panhandling around the Polygon, he secured another position for himself, but not until he lodged a complaint that our office was a hostile work environment.
…Now, I know what you’re thinking: I paint a pretty unwelcoming, if almost hostile, picture of our office here. Sure it’s unwelcoming… if you you’re incompetent and can’t or don’t do what the team needs.
Anyway, that is neither here nor there. Let me just close by referring you to a somewhat vindicating reference: a new book by Matt Latimer, one of President Bush's top speechwriters from March 2007 to October 2008. He was also chief speechwriter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for three years. In the latter job, he met the Loaf whom he refers to him on page 123 in his latest book “Speech-Less.” If you check it out on Amazon, you can read an excerpt about his take on the Loaf (page 123 and following).
Ah, Loaf! Ah humanity! At least now eau-de-loaf doesn’t perfume my afternoons, typos don’t plague my scene setters, and I am free to update the tickler any time I damn well please.
P.S. Yes, he ate meatloaf every day for lunch. EVERY G-D DAY.
I know, I know … I have been very remiss, negligent, and otherwise incommunicable on this blog for the past several months.
For this I apologize. My excuse? -- for I believe that every good omission bears an even better explanation… my excuse is that I have been somewhat suppressing my own writerly voice for the sake of my principal. I am trying to break free and split my personality like the good Gemini that I am, though. I finally think I’ve done it.
Yesterday while jamming to Sublime at the gym, I realized that doing so is all about being carefree when you can and serious when you must.
So, here goes. I am back.
We did have quite a bit of drama at the Polygon this summer and I have only recently recovered my wits and patience enough to put pen to paper, or fingers to qwerty as the case may more ineloquently be.
The Drama Mama’s name was Loaf – or so we dubbed him on account of his… well, I won’t get ahead of myself.
Sometime in July, Loaf literally came a-knockin’ on our door, inquiring if we had a position for a writer available.
No, we didn’t.
He had been “let go” from his previous job (read FIRED) because he couldn’t/wouldn’t write what his principal wanted to say.
Before we even got to know him, when an event our Boss was supposed to do got deferred to his, we used to casually joke, “Better wake up Loaf!” – only we used his real name back then because we hadn’t yet been subjected to his nasty habit that earned him the Loaf moniker.
So anyway, what I am trying to say is that my partner in crime and I were a little apprehensive about his credentials.
But no one really asked us – or, if they did, they didn’t listen to us.
Within a week, there we were, giving Loaf a lair, er, a desk, briefing him on our processes, checklists and files, and instructing him how he could best help us out.
Loaf was supposed to be the laborer, the “researcher,” the look-ahead-a-few-events, read background information and suggest themes guy. Also he was supposed to make initial contact with event points of contact, maintain our tickler, build scene setters, and maintain a file of press coverage and quotations from our Boss.
Suffice it to say that he did none of these things reliably, with any consistency or without some degree of rework required. …but there I go getting ahead of myself again.
We knew the Loaf had officially landed when we saw numerous accoutrements and adornments strewn and hung about his cubicle: two framed flags from previous assignments hanging in his cubicle, a decorative mouse-pad, several “inside joke” snapshots, ten framed family pictures, and an old, mahogany, high backed leather chair in front of his desk.
W-T-F!?
Also, atop his bookshelf, there were two long, yellow “pool noodles.”
When we inquired what those were for, Loaf lipped:
“Hall jousting.”
“Hall jousting?”
“Yes, hall jousting.”
“You used to hall joust in the E-ring?”
“No, in the half-corridor outside the D-ring.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it was usually later in the afternoon, after we had already watched ‘Ellen.’”
“Hmmm. Okay. Sounds like fun.”
W-T-F??????
I could go into painful details of specific shenanigans … well, I could, but they’d be... well, painful for me and out of keeping with my new “no bad days” stress-free mentality. I'd rather not dwell on it.
Suffice it to say that the following timeline sums up his daily routine for the approximately three months he spent with us.
A Day in the Life of the Loaf:
0710 Arrive at work, hang up leather flight jacket
0730 Log onto computer, call the IT office to complain about applications not installed on computer. Demand they install them.
0750 Exchange angry, angry words with the Polygon IT help, but very gently click the receiver in its cradle when hanging up.
0751-0949 Listen to sermons in right ear while senselessly surfing the web or pretending to do work. Open the all-important tickler and lock it for editing so no one else can update it.
0950 Arise, grab gym bag and clandestinely slink out the door without talking to anyone.
1015-1035 “Work out” and take long breaks in between “sets” to chat with pretty girls
1050 Arrive back at office and wash plate for lunch
1055 Remove the most reverent 5” X 5”, 2” thick square of meat from the refrigerator
1056 Place Meatloaf in microwave oven & heat on high for 2 minutes
1059-1135 Bask in the scent of microwaved loaf, and quietly pick at lunch while listening to some more sermons
1136-1725 Peck away at the keyboard, squeak chair, casually talk to wife on the phone about son’s antics, offer bushels of acorns to co-workers, lodge a few more complaints with the Polygon IT staff and the gas company, drop the Boss’s name to get things, refer to yourself as a rank higher than you really are, berate and badger points of contact for failing to return our worksheet, and generally do whatever else it takes to be less useful while making yourself feel more important than you really are.
1726 Arise and clandestinely slink out, regretting that another day has gone by in this god-forsaken office without hall-jousting, watching “Ellen,” nor writing a single piece of purple prose.
When the lead in our office broke it to Loaf that it was time that we found him another place to work, that he should take a few days and come back on Monday, he still showed up to work the very next day. Loaf carried on with his usual mannerisms, but managed to make even less eye contact and more annoying, disruptive phone calls than usual. The image of this Loaf man reminded me of a less than endearing Bartleby the Scrivner. For those who aren’t familiar, Bartelby was a Herman Melville character who haunted an office and preferred not to do just about everything and eventually wasted away for complete lack of effort. Ah, Loaf! Ah humanity!
Panhandling around the Polygon, he secured another position for himself, but not until he lodged a complaint that our office was a hostile work environment.
…Now, I know what you’re thinking: I paint a pretty unwelcoming, if almost hostile, picture of our office here. Sure it’s unwelcoming… if you you’re incompetent and can’t or don’t do what the team needs.
Anyway, that is neither here nor there. Let me just close by referring you to a somewhat vindicating reference: a new book by Matt Latimer, one of President Bush's top speechwriters from March 2007 to October 2008. He was also chief speechwriter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for three years. In the latter job, he met the Loaf whom he refers to him on page 123 in his latest book “Speech-Less.” If you check it out on Amazon, you can read an excerpt about his take on the Loaf (page 123 and following).
Ah, Loaf! Ah humanity! At least now eau-de-loaf doesn’t perfume my afternoons, typos don’t plague my scene setters, and I am free to update the tickler any time I damn well please.
P.S. Yes, he ate meatloaf every day for lunch. EVERY G-D DAY.
23 July 2009
Turn the Page
This afternoon when I was working out, listening to my iPod, Metallica’s version of the Bob Seeger classic “Turn the Page” rumbled into my head. While the song has alway fired me up – for reasons I will get into later – today the tune immediately brought me back to last night, recalling what blares thru the air of Nationals Stadium when their big slugger Adam Dunn comes to bat.
I know that in the past I have extolled (some may say over-extolled) the virtues of the game, but, at the risk of belaboring the point, let me just say that what an AWESOME and celebratory environment it is where your theme song rings out when you come up to bat… hmmm, what would by my theme song? Well, last year I think it was “Suddenly I See” because somewhere along the way I had an epiphany of what I wanted to be and why the hell it meant so much to me. This year… maybe “Werewolves of London”… DUNH-DUNH, dunh-dunh, DUNH-DUNH-dunh-dunh; DUNH-DUNH, dunh-dunh, DUNH-DUNH-dunh-dunh. “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain… he was looking for a place called Lee-ho Flicks, oh to get a big dish of beef chow mein, ah oooooo-uh…” -- you get the idea. (By the way, I don’t care if those aren’t exactly the words, it’s how I hear them.) Why? Because it is a song that acts like it is telling a real story … You know: the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent, lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair…you’d better stay away from him, he’ll rip your lungs out, Jim… I’d like to meet his tailor!” Yeah! So would I. So would I. Every time I hear that song, I pick up the pace or dance in my seat. Make-believe rocks!
Yeah so the theme song bit when players come up to bat and the random “make some noise” flashing signs on the scoreboard simply represent the sheer joy and euphoria of being out with the crowd. I know I feel it every time I am at the ballpark, but the sentiment really hit home last Saturday when we went to a Nats-Cubs game with my buddy and his six year old daughter. It was her first baseball game. Dad thought that she might get bored with it after an hour or so, so we took separate cars, but she hung in there and was whooping it up all night. By the later innings she was imploring me to convince her dad that she could sleep there that night and go to the game the next day. She loved it! Finally, she had found a place where it was not only socially acceptable, but encouraged, to eat junk and scream and yell your head off at random intervals! Ah, yes. Maybe baseball is a game for the six year old kid in all of us. After all, they are playing what amounts to a kids’ game, right? But then it is also an old man’s game too, as evidenced by the geezers who offered to give the Mets tips on fundamentals: http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/ny-liball1512969594jul14,0,3814921.story
Ah, bless the Mets.
So, getting back to the theme song … Now, I am pretty sure not many of you have a healthy respect for Adam Dunn, but take it from me… he’s 5th in the National League in home runs so far (with 24), one behind the 2, 3, & 4, guys, but 10 behind big Albert Pujols who is really in a class of his own. If I recall correctly, he hit homers in four of the seven games that I have seen in person this year. So here he is: a bona fide power hitter on a team that has a 28-66 record …
He must feel like he is “on a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha” listening to the “engine moaning out its one note song”: a leader of a team that, however poor their won-loss record, leads the league in home runs but, like Adam Dunn, has shaky defense and they just can’t ever seem to consistently get it together.
“You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to ex-plo-ho-ode!” So, there he is: "up on the stage, playing the star again" … there he is, "turn the page." As he gets the rush from crushing the ball, he must also yearn to hide, to tuck himself up inside his ballcap.
As I alluded to earlier, that song moved me the most, made me want to clutch steel or pound my feet into the treadmill when I was at sea on an aircraft carrier. Allotted only about 30-45 minutes of time to crank out 100% of the day’s frustrations, sweating from the triple digit heat … “as the sweat pours off your body like the music that play-hey-eh” … chasing borrowed time – time to myself – and running away from having too much time – the time I spend working and we all spend away from home for many months… “later in the evening, when you lie awake in bed, with the echo of the amplifiers ringing in your head; you smoke the day’s last cigarette, remembering what she sa-he-head, what she said. …So here I am, on the road again [at sea again], here I am up on the stage [called on to lead], there I go, playing the star again; there I go… turn the page.”
In reconsidering it all now, I also find that I think that the alternating monotony and intensity is maybe a little like what my boss probably experiences on the road or even in and around Washington on a daily basis in public speaking events, meetings, press conferences, cross-talks where he sees and says and hears the same things perhaps too often. And he always tries to make what he says sound fresh for the fresh faces … preaching and pleading to keep people working hard, focusing on their tasks, saving lives for sure, saving money maybe … imploring diplomats and his counterparts to listen and learn as well as he does. To be just the leader and the star again, quietly trying to set the example, but “you always seem outnumbered but you don’t dare take a stand, take your stand” because the press or Congress or the Violent Extremists might mow you down. Hmmmm.
All of us who thrive and strive in these worlds, be they baseball, sea duty, or public service, at times just want to turn the page.
But what I think we’ll find when we do, when we flip back, we’ll find that the story – because we lived so intensely, cared so much, and screamed so loud – the story was probably pretty darn good.
I know that in the past I have extolled (some may say over-extolled) the virtues of the game, but, at the risk of belaboring the point, let me just say that what an AWESOME and celebratory environment it is where your theme song rings out when you come up to bat… hmmm, what would by my theme song? Well, last year I think it was “Suddenly I See” because somewhere along the way I had an epiphany of what I wanted to be and why the hell it meant so much to me. This year… maybe “Werewolves of London”… DUNH-DUNH, dunh-dunh, DUNH-DUNH-dunh-dunh; DUNH-DUNH, dunh-dunh, DUNH-DUNH-dunh-dunh. “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain… he was looking for a place called Lee-ho Flicks, oh to get a big dish of beef chow mein, ah oooooo-uh…” -- you get the idea. (By the way, I don’t care if those aren’t exactly the words, it’s how I hear them.) Why? Because it is a song that acts like it is telling a real story … You know: the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent, lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair…you’d better stay away from him, he’ll rip your lungs out, Jim… I’d like to meet his tailor!” Yeah! So would I. So would I. Every time I hear that song, I pick up the pace or dance in my seat. Make-believe rocks!
Yeah so the theme song bit when players come up to bat and the random “make some noise” flashing signs on the scoreboard simply represent the sheer joy and euphoria of being out with the crowd. I know I feel it every time I am at the ballpark, but the sentiment really hit home last Saturday when we went to a Nats-Cubs game with my buddy and his six year old daughter. It was her first baseball game. Dad thought that she might get bored with it after an hour or so, so we took separate cars, but she hung in there and was whooping it up all night. By the later innings she was imploring me to convince her dad that she could sleep there that night and go to the game the next day. She loved it! Finally, she had found a place where it was not only socially acceptable, but encouraged, to eat junk and scream and yell your head off at random intervals! Ah, yes. Maybe baseball is a game for the six year old kid in all of us. After all, they are playing what amounts to a kids’ game, right? But then it is also an old man’s game too, as evidenced by the geezers who offered to give the Mets tips on fundamentals: http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/ny-liball1512969594jul14,0,3814921.story
Ah, bless the Mets.
So, getting back to the theme song … Now, I am pretty sure not many of you have a healthy respect for Adam Dunn, but take it from me… he’s 5th in the National League in home runs so far (with 24), one behind the 2, 3, & 4, guys, but 10 behind big Albert Pujols who is really in a class of his own. If I recall correctly, he hit homers in four of the seven games that I have seen in person this year. So here he is: a bona fide power hitter on a team that has a 28-66 record …
He must feel like he is “on a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha” listening to the “engine moaning out its one note song”: a leader of a team that, however poor their won-loss record, leads the league in home runs but, like Adam Dunn, has shaky defense and they just can’t ever seem to consistently get it together.
“You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to ex-plo-ho-ode!” So, there he is: "up on the stage, playing the star again" … there he is, "turn the page." As he gets the rush from crushing the ball, he must also yearn to hide, to tuck himself up inside his ballcap.
As I alluded to earlier, that song moved me the most, made me want to clutch steel or pound my feet into the treadmill when I was at sea on an aircraft carrier. Allotted only about 30-45 minutes of time to crank out 100% of the day’s frustrations, sweating from the triple digit heat … “as the sweat pours off your body like the music that play-hey-eh” … chasing borrowed time – time to myself – and running away from having too much time – the time I spend working and we all spend away from home for many months… “later in the evening, when you lie awake in bed, with the echo of the amplifiers ringing in your head; you smoke the day’s last cigarette, remembering what she sa-he-head, what she said. …So here I am, on the road again [at sea again], here I am up on the stage [called on to lead], there I go, playing the star again; there I go… turn the page.”
In reconsidering it all now, I also find that I think that the alternating monotony and intensity is maybe a little like what my boss probably experiences on the road or even in and around Washington on a daily basis in public speaking events, meetings, press conferences, cross-talks where he sees and says and hears the same things perhaps too often. And he always tries to make what he says sound fresh for the fresh faces … preaching and pleading to keep people working hard, focusing on their tasks, saving lives for sure, saving money maybe … imploring diplomats and his counterparts to listen and learn as well as he does. To be just the leader and the star again, quietly trying to set the example, but “you always seem outnumbered but you don’t dare take a stand, take your stand” because the press or Congress or the Violent Extremists might mow you down. Hmmmm.
All of us who thrive and strive in these worlds, be they baseball, sea duty, or public service, at times just want to turn the page.
But what I think we’ll find when we do, when we flip back, we’ll find that the story – because we lived so intensely, cared so much, and screamed so loud – the story was probably pretty darn good.
28 May 2009
Take me out with the crowd...
"So what do you want for your birthday?" I was asked.
"I don’t know," I said…
Problem was, I knew. I knew.
I wanted a treat … a bomb pop … to write like Walt Whitman … to be blonde … to actually have blue eyes … to be six foot one … something that I had wanted all of the these years … something that since I was a kid I could never have or never be… maybe just to run pain free, to hide in tall grass again, to open my arms to a sunrise, to hug my grandmother … to feel and taste and hold something beyond cool, beyond, yummy, beyond sunny, beyond belonging.
Birthdays are funny. I honestly enjoy other people’s birthdays more than I have ever liked my own. I think mainly because I like celebrating my friends and family and whupping up as much whoop as I can muster for them, but I scarcely feel celebrated enough myself. Short of seeing neon signs every quarter block declaring “Happy Birthday” to me and having every dog I know howl out the birthday tune, quite frankly I will always feel undercelebrated. Not that I feel like I am this oh great one worthy of so much pomp and fan fare. I just love, I mean I really crave a super duper celebration.
So when the 22nd of May each year rolls around, I start to get apprehensive… that maybe again at birthday time I am going to be amongst something quiet, something humble, something however sincere, is just like me -- and just not what I really want: raucous, pink, bright green, frosting filled, people people people, people who don’t know each other, but people who want to … people who don’t know me, but people who long to … rockstar guitars, fancy cars, and periodic celebrations of life!
This year, I got up and went for a birthday run in a birthday outfit from my dear husband and when I was taking my birthday shower before I opened my birthday cards I decided to take this birthday celebration into my own birthday hands --- are you getting the idea of how many times I want to hear the word “birthday” on my birthday? Take note for next year, friends! So, yeah, when I was drying off in my birthday suit, I told Russ that for my birthday I wanted to go to a baseball game. Yay! A birthday baseball game! What could be better? What could capture all of the things that I love and long for more than a baseball game? Sun, fans, dudes, grass and sand, leather balls and wooden bats, random and focused cheering, raucousness and singing for no reason, mascots with absurd heads, everyone trying to act young, everyone celebrating and playing what is really just a kid’s game.
Goddamn, what makes me love baseball so much? America’s pastime is ever my pastime too. I so fondly remember falling asleep on summer nights listening to the “fan radio” – WFAN AM 660 in NY, learning how to keep a scorecard, going to Cooperstown with my dad (and boycotting the year of the strike)…
One year when I was little (before I was old enough to play girls’ softball), my brother, our neighbor friend Geoff, and I played on the same Little League team together, coached by our dads. We were the Expos and we were no more successful than our Major League namesake of the 1980’s. Heck, I don’t even think I had a hit. The best I managed to muster were some fierce foul balls down the third base line. Man, did I keep the third base coach on his toes, though… But I loved putting on that polyester red, white and blue uniform, the high split baseball oversocks over my sand-stained tube socks… cramming a helmet on my head and taking my licks. Speaking of licks, it was customary in our town for the winning team’s coach to treat his players to ice cream at the Hidey-Ho. We Expos had gone all year without a trip to the Hidey-Ho. During the last game of the season, we were winning, actually winning! We kids got so excited and started whispering to each other then eventually shouting amongst ourselves, “We’re going to the Hidey-Ho! We’re going to the Hidey-Ho!” Well, something happened… I can’t even remember what it was, but we ended up losing or tying or some result that wasn’t technically Hidey-Ho worthy. When the final out was made, before we could hang our collective little heads, our dads told us that they would take us to the Hidey-Ho anyway because we came so close. Oh yeah!!!! That’s a celebration! That’s baseball! “We’re going to the Hidey-Ho! We’re going to the Hidey-Ho!” We went to the Hidey-Ho.
I love baseball. Baseball gets in my fiber. Did you know that the first night baseball game in history was played on May 24th, 1935 in Cincinnati, OH at Crosley Field? See: I was born to love this game! Another marvelous quality about the game of baseball is that there is no time clock, but players ask for “time out.” How great is that? And each game opens with our nation’s National Anthem. And me, I love belting it out like no one is listening – because no one is. Right?
Towards the end of a baseball game there is mandatory stretching: the 7th inning stretch. How great is that? Very. My buddy Ryan and I went to a Padres game in San Diego at the Litter Box (you know, Petco Park) that lasted 17 innings and midway through the 14th, we were all directed to perform a 14th inning stretch and sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” all over again. “I don’t care if I never get back” – what’s that supposed to mean? Who cares? How fun is it to sing like you know what you’re talking about, though? The song talks about being taken out, celebrating with a crowd, rooting, buying something sweet and salty, and really not worrying about anything but being out at the old ball game, living in the moment of revelry!
The first Major League baseball game that I ever went to was with my father and my friend Linda. I was 13, I think, because it was in the summer of 1987. Dad insisted that we do something educational during the day before the night game at Shea, so he took us to Sagamore Hill, Teddy Roosevelt’s house. I’m not sure how much we got out of that, but now it is funny for me to think about that because Teddy is my favorite racing president mascot at Nationals Stadium. But anyway, when we got to Shea, and I had my first look at that HUGE green field – the stage – and the players that I watched almost everyday on TV in real life: Gary Carter, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra… how fantastic! What a celebration! I wore my crummy painted-on Mets shirt and big Christmas ball sized Mets logo earrings with pride that day and cheered myself hoarse when my favorite, #8, the catcher, Gary Carter hit a home run and the big apple lit up and popped out of the magic hat in right field. Hells yeah!
So on this May 24th, for my 35th birthday, Russ and I went to a Nats-O’s game. We took the train there, crammed amongst many other fans clad in Nats Red and Orioles Orange. I wore my Mets hat (the same smelly one that I wore when I was a kid) and Russ wore his “dyed in the wool” Nationals hat – the one with the cursive “W” that my buddy Phil confuses with the Wegmans grocery store symbol: “I can’t believe all of the Wegmans fans around here… I mean it's a great place to shop, but people really rally around their grocery store!" Silly Phil! So yeah, we loaded up on the train and trundled to the Navy Yard stop on the green line to Nationals Ball Park. The few blocks from the metro stop to the ball park remind me of the neighborhood around Safeco Field in Seattle and Tropicana Field in Tampa: teeming with perpetually festive hawkers of hot dogs, kettle corn, memorabilia and beer. What’s not to love?! It was a super sensation just mingling among the throng of people, ambling down the street to the ball park to partake of a little pastime, to revel in the celebration that is baseball! Yippie!
When we first got inside, we ended up circumnavigating the ballpark to find the beer we wanted; after the first we weren’t going to be particular, but we wanted the first to be my favorite summer beer: Shock Top! Mmmmmn Mmmeh!
To start the game off, the Orioles fans desecrated the National Anthem by shouting out “O SAY during the “O say does that star spangled banner yet wave…” part. In the words of my mother, “I was none too pleased about that!” Last week when my Mom and Dad were in town, I took them to the American History museum to see the original Old Glory, the one that bravely waved over top of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. (Sheesh, if anyone should respect the Star Spangled Banner it should be Baltimoreans being that Fort McHenry was in their harbor, those bastards…!). Anyway, the newly restored Old Glory in the Smithsonian is impressive and awe-inspiring. Before I saw it for myself, I had never really realized just how big it was. It was so big that the only place that the little old lady who originally sewed it could work on it was a brewery floor. Now that’s something more to celebrate – proof that our flag was born out of celebration; there was always a party going on upstairs: “O’er the land of the free… and the home… of the… brave!”
Dad was particularly struck by – or at least he felt like pointing out – the use of apostrophe (a declarative “O”,” for those unfamiliar with grammar jargon). As in “O say can you see… “ and “O Say does that …” or in Whitman’s “O Captain my Captain!” To me, the apostrophe signifies pride and exclamation to no one and everyone in particular. Thus our national anthem is a celebratory song for the masses.
So yeah, the Orioles fans desecrated the national anthem. That’s all right, we let them party along anyway. There was a particularly annoying fan seated behind us, though. He was a 20-30 yr old man-boy who was at the game with his Nationals fan dad. He obnoxiously felt like he had to school his own father in everything from the nuances of the game to how to hold his beer. Honestly, Boy! Well, late in the game, when the Nats had a potential rally working, I pulled out my green St Patrick’s Day Miller Lite Nats hat and put it over my Mets hat and Russ turned his ball cap inside out in rally style. The rally caps worked! Adam Dunn did it again. He hit a grand slam… the stadium exploded! And the snipperdyjibbit behind us had to take a seat and stuff it. Woo-hoo! Russ and I about lost our voices on that one and high-fived everyone around us. The Natty Nats actually held on to win the game too. Woo-hoo! We left the ballpark in celebration with the rest of the fans and enjoyed a packed train ride home, celebrating my birthday with no one and everyone in particular. As Tim McCarver, former Mets announcer and Cardinal’s catcher said “O Baby I love it!”
Maybe when I am older, I might have a future in baseball… as a play-by-play announcer, a beer hawker, or just a big-head wearing mascot/dancing fool.
"I don’t know," I said…
Problem was, I knew. I knew.
I wanted a treat … a bomb pop … to write like Walt Whitman … to be blonde … to actually have blue eyes … to be six foot one … something that I had wanted all of the these years … something that since I was a kid I could never have or never be… maybe just to run pain free, to hide in tall grass again, to open my arms to a sunrise, to hug my grandmother … to feel and taste and hold something beyond cool, beyond, yummy, beyond sunny, beyond belonging.
Birthdays are funny. I honestly enjoy other people’s birthdays more than I have ever liked my own. I think mainly because I like celebrating my friends and family and whupping up as much whoop as I can muster for them, but I scarcely feel celebrated enough myself. Short of seeing neon signs every quarter block declaring “Happy Birthday” to me and having every dog I know howl out the birthday tune, quite frankly I will always feel undercelebrated. Not that I feel like I am this oh great one worthy of so much pomp and fan fare. I just love, I mean I really crave a super duper celebration.
So when the 22nd of May each year rolls around, I start to get apprehensive… that maybe again at birthday time I am going to be amongst something quiet, something humble, something however sincere, is just like me -- and just not what I really want: raucous, pink, bright green, frosting filled, people people people, people who don’t know each other, but people who want to … people who don’t know me, but people who long to … rockstar guitars, fancy cars, and periodic celebrations of life!
This year, I got up and went for a birthday run in a birthday outfit from my dear husband and when I was taking my birthday shower before I opened my birthday cards I decided to take this birthday celebration into my own birthday hands --- are you getting the idea of how many times I want to hear the word “birthday” on my birthday? Take note for next year, friends! So, yeah, when I was drying off in my birthday suit, I told Russ that for my birthday I wanted to go to a baseball game. Yay! A birthday baseball game! What could be better? What could capture all of the things that I love and long for more than a baseball game? Sun, fans, dudes, grass and sand, leather balls and wooden bats, random and focused cheering, raucousness and singing for no reason, mascots with absurd heads, everyone trying to act young, everyone celebrating and playing what is really just a kid’s game.
Goddamn, what makes me love baseball so much? America’s pastime is ever my pastime too. I so fondly remember falling asleep on summer nights listening to the “fan radio” – WFAN AM 660 in NY, learning how to keep a scorecard, going to Cooperstown with my dad (and boycotting the year of the strike)…
One year when I was little (before I was old enough to play girls’ softball), my brother, our neighbor friend Geoff, and I played on the same Little League team together, coached by our dads. We were the Expos and we were no more successful than our Major League namesake of the 1980’s. Heck, I don’t even think I had a hit. The best I managed to muster were some fierce foul balls down the third base line. Man, did I keep the third base coach on his toes, though… But I loved putting on that polyester red, white and blue uniform, the high split baseball oversocks over my sand-stained tube socks… cramming a helmet on my head and taking my licks. Speaking of licks, it was customary in our town for the winning team’s coach to treat his players to ice cream at the Hidey-Ho. We Expos had gone all year without a trip to the Hidey-Ho. During the last game of the season, we were winning, actually winning! We kids got so excited and started whispering to each other then eventually shouting amongst ourselves, “We’re going to the Hidey-Ho! We’re going to the Hidey-Ho!” Well, something happened… I can’t even remember what it was, but we ended up losing or tying or some result that wasn’t technically Hidey-Ho worthy. When the final out was made, before we could hang our collective little heads, our dads told us that they would take us to the Hidey-Ho anyway because we came so close. Oh yeah!!!! That’s a celebration! That’s baseball! “We’re going to the Hidey-Ho! We’re going to the Hidey-Ho!” We went to the Hidey-Ho.
I love baseball. Baseball gets in my fiber. Did you know that the first night baseball game in history was played on May 24th, 1935 in Cincinnati, OH at Crosley Field? See: I was born to love this game! Another marvelous quality about the game of baseball is that there is no time clock, but players ask for “time out.” How great is that? And each game opens with our nation’s National Anthem. And me, I love belting it out like no one is listening – because no one is. Right?
Towards the end of a baseball game there is mandatory stretching: the 7th inning stretch. How great is that? Very. My buddy Ryan and I went to a Padres game in San Diego at the Litter Box (you know, Petco Park) that lasted 17 innings and midway through the 14th, we were all directed to perform a 14th inning stretch and sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” all over again. “I don’t care if I never get back” – what’s that supposed to mean? Who cares? How fun is it to sing like you know what you’re talking about, though? The song talks about being taken out, celebrating with a crowd, rooting, buying something sweet and salty, and really not worrying about anything but being out at the old ball game, living in the moment of revelry!
The first Major League baseball game that I ever went to was with my father and my friend Linda. I was 13, I think, because it was in the summer of 1987. Dad insisted that we do something educational during the day before the night game at Shea, so he took us to Sagamore Hill, Teddy Roosevelt’s house. I’m not sure how much we got out of that, but now it is funny for me to think about that because Teddy is my favorite racing president mascot at Nationals Stadium. But anyway, when we got to Shea, and I had my first look at that HUGE green field – the stage – and the players that I watched almost everyday on TV in real life: Gary Carter, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra… how fantastic! What a celebration! I wore my crummy painted-on Mets shirt and big Christmas ball sized Mets logo earrings with pride that day and cheered myself hoarse when my favorite, #8, the catcher, Gary Carter hit a home run and the big apple lit up and popped out of the magic hat in right field. Hells yeah!
So on this May 24th, for my 35th birthday, Russ and I went to a Nats-O’s game. We took the train there, crammed amongst many other fans clad in Nats Red and Orioles Orange. I wore my Mets hat (the same smelly one that I wore when I was a kid) and Russ wore his “dyed in the wool” Nationals hat – the one with the cursive “W” that my buddy Phil confuses with the Wegmans grocery store symbol: “I can’t believe all of the Wegmans fans around here… I mean it's a great place to shop, but people really rally around their grocery store!" Silly Phil! So yeah, we loaded up on the train and trundled to the Navy Yard stop on the green line to Nationals Ball Park. The few blocks from the metro stop to the ball park remind me of the neighborhood around Safeco Field in Seattle and Tropicana Field in Tampa: teeming with perpetually festive hawkers of hot dogs, kettle corn, memorabilia and beer. What’s not to love?! It was a super sensation just mingling among the throng of people, ambling down the street to the ball park to partake of a little pastime, to revel in the celebration that is baseball! Yippie!
When we first got inside, we ended up circumnavigating the ballpark to find the beer we wanted; after the first we weren’t going to be particular, but we wanted the first to be my favorite summer beer: Shock Top! Mmmmmn Mmmeh!
To start the game off, the Orioles fans desecrated the National Anthem by shouting out “O SAY during the “O say does that star spangled banner yet wave…” part. In the words of my mother, “I was none too pleased about that!” Last week when my Mom and Dad were in town, I took them to the American History museum to see the original Old Glory, the one that bravely waved over top of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. (Sheesh, if anyone should respect the Star Spangled Banner it should be Baltimoreans being that Fort McHenry was in their harbor, those bastards…!). Anyway, the newly restored Old Glory in the Smithsonian is impressive and awe-inspiring. Before I saw it for myself, I had never really realized just how big it was. It was so big that the only place that the little old lady who originally sewed it could work on it was a brewery floor. Now that’s something more to celebrate – proof that our flag was born out of celebration; there was always a party going on upstairs: “O’er the land of the free… and the home… of the… brave!”
Dad was particularly struck by – or at least he felt like pointing out – the use of apostrophe (a declarative “O”,” for those unfamiliar with grammar jargon). As in “O say can you see… “ and “O Say does that …” or in Whitman’s “O Captain my Captain!” To me, the apostrophe signifies pride and exclamation to no one and everyone in particular. Thus our national anthem is a celebratory song for the masses.
So yeah, the Orioles fans desecrated the national anthem. That’s all right, we let them party along anyway. There was a particularly annoying fan seated behind us, though. He was a 20-30 yr old man-boy who was at the game with his Nationals fan dad. He obnoxiously felt like he had to school his own father in everything from the nuances of the game to how to hold his beer. Honestly, Boy! Well, late in the game, when the Nats had a potential rally working, I pulled out my green St Patrick’s Day Miller Lite Nats hat and put it over my Mets hat and Russ turned his ball cap inside out in rally style. The rally caps worked! Adam Dunn did it again. He hit a grand slam… the stadium exploded! And the snipperdyjibbit behind us had to take a seat and stuff it. Woo-hoo! Russ and I about lost our voices on that one and high-fived everyone around us. The Natty Nats actually held on to win the game too. Woo-hoo! We left the ballpark in celebration with the rest of the fans and enjoyed a packed train ride home, celebrating my birthday with no one and everyone in particular. As Tim McCarver, former Mets announcer and Cardinal’s catcher said “O Baby I love it!”
Maybe when I am older, I might have a future in baseball… as a play-by-play announcer, a beer hawker, or just a big-head wearing mascot/dancing fool.
03 May 2009
As the Polygon Turns (Episode 22): Something To Talk About
Working where I do and with what’s going on in the world, people outside the Polygon often remark to me, “wow, you must get to see and hear some really neat high level things… get quite a perspective on the situation around the world.” And while, yes, I do – and at the risk of sounding modest, let me just say that I do find it all very interesting and intriguiging, insightful and there is an awful lot that makes me go, “huhmm. How ‘bout that?” But, you know, oftentimes I honestly get tired of everything having to be so goddamn meaningful.
Like we can never thank so and so enough or such-and-such an organization just does blah blah blah. I mean, yes it is important, yeah sure (did you just say ‘yeah, sure’ or yes, sir’?) I totally think that there are several deserving and sacrificing people worthy of our praise… I just weary sometimes of that being the sole meat of my job. Can’t I do something frivolous? Make a mockery of something?
Many are the times when I yearn for the simple and the unglamorous. Like my pal Bill – bless his honest, enthusiastic heart – why does he have to preface his deployment stories with the statement “I was force projecting the receiver downrange?” When, seriously he could just as well saying that he was giving gas in the air.
And then there is another guy I work with, we’ll say that his call sign is ‘Beave,’ like in “Leave it to Beaver.” Well, Beave is one of those people who seems to find that he needs to always ask me if I am okay, laugh really loudly at stuff that isn’t that funny, and write overwrought prose that reflects the beliefs he has to tell you about: “You know, maybe I can't write but ... I believe in the triangle of leadership: authority, accountability, responsibility... It may sound cheesy, but---“ Yeah, well, yeah, it does… I mean I believe in that stuff too, but I don’t wear it on my sleeve, dude! But I just listen. Like my dad told me once: just nod and smile sweetly.
But there are conversations that go on around there that seriously amuse me in the most slapmythighs kind of way.
There is this one lady who works in my organization, just not directly in my office, who makes me just want to wring her neck or laugh my ass off when talking with her if what she said wasn’t so frustratingly dumb or hilariously funny. When I talk to her I find my inner monologue saying, “is this really happening – why don’t you wake up from this absurd dream?” But no – it is all too real. Like this conversation:
"Hi Lieutenant Commander, this is Nancy."
"Hello"
"Hi! ...Um, okay. I don't know if you know, but it's the first of May."
"Uh huh."
"Oh good! You know!"
"Yep."
"So they have the _________ meeting--"
"No, not anymore" (like I told her last month)
"Oh, okay. So it is totally cancelled?"
"Yep."
"Oh okay, so no more, okay good. Anything else for me?"
"Nope!"
"Okay buh-bye."
"Bye."
Which had nothing on the phone conversation that she had with Beave the other day:
“_________, this is Nancy. Howfcann eyelp youf?”
“Hi Nacey, this Beaver Cleaver.”
“humeye.”
“Are you eating? Do you have something in your mouth?”
“Yah, lumftime. It’s falad.”
“Salad? Oh you’re eating salad?”
“Yeah, sorry, you’re probably wondering why I called.”
“What???--- I called you. You didn’t call me.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, you answered the phone with your mouth full, I told you who I was and then you said… oh, forget it! Is Captain Krunch available.”
“No, I will be sure to remember to tell him that you called.”
“Yeah, thank you, bye.” Yeah, right she will! Like she remembered that she called you...
But the one around there who really kills me with his conversations is the staff’s lawyer. This guy is hilarious! Hill-ar-ee-us!
I stood in the front office the other day with several others, waiting for the end-of-day meeting. People were milling about, mincing in and out of the office, generally trying to look either busy or meaningful until we’d all be permitted to trundle into the main office to deliver last minute end-of-day remarks. But the lawyer, he was standing by himself, about two feet from the big screen TV on the wall. I thought maybe he was just nearsighted and wanted to catch up on his news. Then it started: he was conversing, expressing himself, cross-examining, objecting and sustaining, furrowing his brow and waving his hands. I thought he was talking to the TV, but then I realized he wasn’t even really looking at it. He kept looking to his right – at nothing in particular, and kept arguing and trying to make his point. When we all moved into the other room, just outside the boss’s main office, the lawyer took his argument in there too, stood in line and worked things out. I seriously wanted to crack up.
Last week, my pal Bill called the lawyer to ask him the legality of something we had been asked to write. I wasn’t really paying attention, but when Bill got off the phone he started railing about how he can’t stand it when someone puts him on speakerphone. The lawyer had just done that to him. Bill couldn’t figure out why, because it was so irritating because he had to keep repeating himself. I told him that the reason why the lawyer did that was so his alter-ego, the voices in his head or whoever his imaginary defendant/friend was could hear the conversation, duh?!
Now that’s something to talk about. STAY TUNED!
Like we can never thank so and so enough or such-and-such an organization just does blah blah blah. I mean, yes it is important, yeah sure (did you just say ‘yeah, sure’ or yes, sir’?) I totally think that there are several deserving and sacrificing people worthy of our praise… I just weary sometimes of that being the sole meat of my job. Can’t I do something frivolous? Make a mockery of something?
Many are the times when I yearn for the simple and the unglamorous. Like my pal Bill – bless his honest, enthusiastic heart – why does he have to preface his deployment stories with the statement “I was force projecting the receiver downrange?” When, seriously he could just as well saying that he was giving gas in the air.
And then there is another guy I work with, we’ll say that his call sign is ‘Beave,’ like in “Leave it to Beaver.” Well, Beave is one of those people who seems to find that he needs to always ask me if I am okay, laugh really loudly at stuff that isn’t that funny, and write overwrought prose that reflects the beliefs he has to tell you about: “You know, maybe I can't write but ... I believe in the triangle of leadership: authority, accountability, responsibility... It may sound cheesy, but---“ Yeah, well, yeah, it does… I mean I believe in that stuff too, but I don’t wear it on my sleeve, dude! But I just listen. Like my dad told me once: just nod and smile sweetly.
But there are conversations that go on around there that seriously amuse me in the most slapmythighs kind of way.
There is this one lady who works in my organization, just not directly in my office, who makes me just want to wring her neck or laugh my ass off when talking with her if what she said wasn’t so frustratingly dumb or hilariously funny. When I talk to her I find my inner monologue saying, “is this really happening – why don’t you wake up from this absurd dream?” But no – it is all too real. Like this conversation:
"Hi Lieutenant Commander, this is Nancy."
"Hello"
"Hi! ...Um, okay. I don't know if you know, but it's the first of May."
"Uh huh."
"Oh good! You know!"
"Yep."
"So they have the _________ meeting--"
"No, not anymore" (like I told her last month)
"Oh, okay. So it is totally cancelled?"
"Yep."
"Oh okay, so no more, okay good. Anything else for me?"
"Nope!"
"Okay buh-bye."
"Bye."
Which had nothing on the phone conversation that she had with Beave the other day:
“_________, this is Nancy. Howfcann eyelp youf?”
“Hi Nacey, this Beaver Cleaver.”
“humeye.”
“Are you eating? Do you have something in your mouth?”
“Yah, lumftime. It’s falad.”
“Salad? Oh you’re eating salad?”
“Yeah, sorry, you’re probably wondering why I called.”
“What???--- I called you. You didn’t call me.”
“I didn’t?”
“No, you answered the phone with your mouth full, I told you who I was and then you said… oh, forget it! Is Captain Krunch available.”
“No, I will be sure to remember to tell him that you called.”
“Yeah, thank you, bye.” Yeah, right she will! Like she remembered that she called you...
But the one around there who really kills me with his conversations is the staff’s lawyer. This guy is hilarious! Hill-ar-ee-us!
I stood in the front office the other day with several others, waiting for the end-of-day meeting. People were milling about, mincing in and out of the office, generally trying to look either busy or meaningful until we’d all be permitted to trundle into the main office to deliver last minute end-of-day remarks. But the lawyer, he was standing by himself, about two feet from the big screen TV on the wall. I thought maybe he was just nearsighted and wanted to catch up on his news. Then it started: he was conversing, expressing himself, cross-examining, objecting and sustaining, furrowing his brow and waving his hands. I thought he was talking to the TV, but then I realized he wasn’t even really looking at it. He kept looking to his right – at nothing in particular, and kept arguing and trying to make his point. When we all moved into the other room, just outside the boss’s main office, the lawyer took his argument in there too, stood in line and worked things out. I seriously wanted to crack up.
Last week, my pal Bill called the lawyer to ask him the legality of something we had been asked to write. I wasn’t really paying attention, but when Bill got off the phone he started railing about how he can’t stand it when someone puts him on speakerphone. The lawyer had just done that to him. Bill couldn’t figure out why, because it was so irritating because he had to keep repeating himself. I told him that the reason why the lawyer did that was so his alter-ego, the voices in his head or whoever his imaginary defendant/friend was could hear the conversation, duh?!
Now that’s something to talk about. STAY TUNED!
06 April 2009
Day in the Sun
"He who you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster." -- Nietzsche
Last week I received an e-flyer from a local running store about an evening with Dick Beardsley: “Join us for a motivational talk by Dick Beardsley, one of America's most celebrated distance runners. His amazing story of triumph and tragedy captivates every audience who has the opportunity to hear his story.” The price was right (free), so my husband and I figured ‘what the hell?’
He looked good -- Dick did: like a runner still. Having been not quite 8 years ago when he and Alberto Salazar had their "day in the sun" at the 1982 Boston Marathon, I knew very little about his running exploits let alone the rest of his life story. An ‘aw shucks’ farm boy from Minnesota, he quickly charmed even the back-of-the-packers in the audience as he talked about how he didn’t even start running until his junior year in high school and was horrible at it until after he graduated and decided that rather than start a life of milking cows right away, he wanted to do nothing else but train for the Olympic trials marathon. With nothing but a $400 / month apartment and a love of the sport, he just ran, and ran and ran. His running shoes were held together by duct tape, though, so he soon figured that he needed to get a shoe contract. Dick's story about how he got a deal with New Balance is somewhat silly and obviously metaphoric. I would ruin it if I tried to recount it here, so I won't, but suffice it to say that ultimately New Balance sponsored him, he got a coach and he ran the race of his life at the ’82 Boston.
Hearing him tell the story of his Boston, naturally made me think of mine. When he woke up that morning he was hoping for an overcast day with about 45F temperature. Nope, it was sunny and perfectly clear. That year and mine as well (in ‘93 & ‘96), the race started at high noon with similar weather. When he discoursed about how each mile he wasn’t sure he could go another one, I thought of my second Boston, when I wasn’t in the best shape, when I too just took it mile by mile, soaked in the day, the moment, the people and the magnitude of what was going on.
During my second Boston, unlike my first, I was overweight, slightly injured and trying to prove to myself that I could run again, run far, run hard, and regain my former glory – or something like that. That was my senior year in college and while I had succeeded socially and academically, I had put on about 35 lbs over the summer and consequently had my worst cross-country season ever. Well, I ran my slowest times since I had begun running competitively. That season, though, I felt like I was running harder and with more heart than ever; but man, did I suck.
Ever since I high school, running had been my “thing.” I made it my thing because it was the first thing that I had found that I could succeed at, do better than most people at, by simply doing more of it. More mileage? Running farther? Pushing harder? All it took was time and I could better myself everyday. I liked that.
I liked it so much that I can still honestly say that running my first Boston Marathon (in 3:23:14) was one of the happiest days of my life. A gloriously sunny day, the first signs of spring and happiness and summer everywhere… crowds of people lining the course, cheering, celebrating, making every single runner feel like Joan Benoit must have felt in 1984 when she won the first women’s Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles... I felt like Joanie and I was running on air, 15 minutes faster than my qualifying time, averaging 7:45 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles, by the end not being able to even feel the lower half of my body, reaching for energy I had already expended miles ago, running on pure guts and sheer will. Thinking about it still makes me smile. I strove to regain that "thing" during the 100th Boston because that one was supposed to be so publicly momentous I felt I must make it so privately for me too.
But when I finished each of them and had my good cry with my fellow participants, I found my dad and he drove me back to campus. That night I slept well and the next day and from then on, I carried on with life as a student. What did I have to show? Sunburnt calves, sore legs, and a smug sense of accomplishment apparently invisible to all.
I remember when I had been in high school and disappointed by my finish at a race or failure to qualify for the next event my father tried to console me by telling me that such things were ephemeral:
“Do you know what Chris Everett Lloyd (or some other tennis player) did after she won the U.S. Open?”
“Had a cake… I don’t know, Dad.”
“She sat in the recovery room and cried.”
“Why?”
“Because she realized that it was all over. And it didn’t really matter.”
Oh, I remember thinking. Not me, I’d be celebrating. No way, damnit.
And after Boston – both of them – I did celebrate, sort of, in the only way I knew how. I think I may have had a milkshake and a good night’s sleep. Anyway, it wasn’t important. Running Boston was an accomplishment, but it was just something all mine, to file away, something that would bring me inner encouragement and confidence when my life felt less free and conquerable. That was all. In anticipation and in retrospect, it was a big thing -- but the experiences scarcely seem to live up to the gratutous hype that one imagines it should. Over the years my marathons have just become something more personal. And that is okay. I think that is where they belong.
For Dick Beardsley, that 80F day when he and Alberto Salazar ran sub 2:09 marathons, Dick finishing 0.6 sec out of first place, he was just happy to be there, just like me. Later in his life he underwent many injuries, most of them traumatic – like getting pulled into farm equipment, being hit by a truck, falling off of a cliff. Through the course of all of that he became addicted to prescription pain medicine, sadly addicted. So what his talk was all about was how we need to help people with similar conditions, not shy away from the stigma of drug addictions, see such cases as diseases too.
His was -- is -- such a sad but inspiring, heartfelt story: how he was a broken man so many times in his life and certain people took pity in him, believed in him and helped him to run the marathon that his life is. So many times he found himself in situations that he had no business living through. And he has. Wow.
Now he lives in Austin, TX. Someone from the audience asked him if he would be interested in running the Austin Marathon. He acknowledged that sure it’s in the back of his mind (it would certainly be a Hollywood sort of story, eh?), but with all that he has put his body through – most recently a knee replacement – he is just pleased to be able to run just over 3 miles in 30 min.
To hear him say so made me smile. I too have thought about running another marathon. Having had my foot reconstructed about 5 ½ years ago and being able to pick up running again 3 years ago, I smile to think about it. Now I can run 3-4 days per week, and just this past Sunday surrounded by singing birds, a sunny day & the first signs of spring, I clipped off a 10 mile training run at about an 8 minute pace. In the last mile or so, I was beginning to think that maybe a marathon was again soon possible… maybe. Then my left foot & leg hurt a little more than usual for the next couple of days ... So maybe not yet; maybe not yet. I am really just focusing on enjoying the magic of the road, the trail & the treadmill, happy to be in control of my addiction, happy to share it with friends who want to talk about it, happy to have had my day in the sun. That's what running is about.
Last week I received an e-flyer from a local running store about an evening with Dick Beardsley: “Join us for a motivational talk by Dick Beardsley, one of America's most celebrated distance runners. His amazing story of triumph and tragedy captivates every audience who has the opportunity to hear his story.” The price was right (free), so my husband and I figured ‘what the hell?’
He looked good -- Dick did: like a runner still. Having been not quite 8 years ago when he and Alberto Salazar had their "day in the sun" at the 1982 Boston Marathon, I knew very little about his running exploits let alone the rest of his life story. An ‘aw shucks’ farm boy from Minnesota, he quickly charmed even the back-of-the-packers in the audience as he talked about how he didn’t even start running until his junior year in high school and was horrible at it until after he graduated and decided that rather than start a life of milking cows right away, he wanted to do nothing else but train for the Olympic trials marathon. With nothing but a $400 / month apartment and a love of the sport, he just ran, and ran and ran. His running shoes were held together by duct tape, though, so he soon figured that he needed to get a shoe contract. Dick's story about how he got a deal with New Balance is somewhat silly and obviously metaphoric. I would ruin it if I tried to recount it here, so I won't, but suffice it to say that ultimately New Balance sponsored him, he got a coach and he ran the race of his life at the ’82 Boston.
Hearing him tell the story of his Boston, naturally made me think of mine. When he woke up that morning he was hoping for an overcast day with about 45F temperature. Nope, it was sunny and perfectly clear. That year and mine as well (in ‘93 & ‘96), the race started at high noon with similar weather. When he discoursed about how each mile he wasn’t sure he could go another one, I thought of my second Boston, when I wasn’t in the best shape, when I too just took it mile by mile, soaked in the day, the moment, the people and the magnitude of what was going on.
During my second Boston, unlike my first, I was overweight, slightly injured and trying to prove to myself that I could run again, run far, run hard, and regain my former glory – or something like that. That was my senior year in college and while I had succeeded socially and academically, I had put on about 35 lbs over the summer and consequently had my worst cross-country season ever. Well, I ran my slowest times since I had begun running competitively. That season, though, I felt like I was running harder and with more heart than ever; but man, did I suck.
Ever since I high school, running had been my “thing.” I made it my thing because it was the first thing that I had found that I could succeed at, do better than most people at, by simply doing more of it. More mileage? Running farther? Pushing harder? All it took was time and I could better myself everyday. I liked that.
I liked it so much that I can still honestly say that running my first Boston Marathon (in 3:23:14) was one of the happiest days of my life. A gloriously sunny day, the first signs of spring and happiness and summer everywhere… crowds of people lining the course, cheering, celebrating, making every single runner feel like Joan Benoit must have felt in 1984 when she won the first women’s Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles... I felt like Joanie and I was running on air, 15 minutes faster than my qualifying time, averaging 7:45 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles, by the end not being able to even feel the lower half of my body, reaching for energy I had already expended miles ago, running on pure guts and sheer will. Thinking about it still makes me smile. I strove to regain that "thing" during the 100th Boston because that one was supposed to be so publicly momentous I felt I must make it so privately for me too.
But when I finished each of them and had my good cry with my fellow participants, I found my dad and he drove me back to campus. That night I slept well and the next day and from then on, I carried on with life as a student. What did I have to show? Sunburnt calves, sore legs, and a smug sense of accomplishment apparently invisible to all.
I remember when I had been in high school and disappointed by my finish at a race or failure to qualify for the next event my father tried to console me by telling me that such things were ephemeral:
“Do you know what Chris Everett Lloyd (or some other tennis player) did after she won the U.S. Open?”
“Had a cake… I don’t know, Dad.”
“She sat in the recovery room and cried.”
“Why?”
“Because she realized that it was all over. And it didn’t really matter.”
Oh, I remember thinking. Not me, I’d be celebrating. No way, damnit.
And after Boston – both of them – I did celebrate, sort of, in the only way I knew how. I think I may have had a milkshake and a good night’s sleep. Anyway, it wasn’t important. Running Boston was an accomplishment, but it was just something all mine, to file away, something that would bring me inner encouragement and confidence when my life felt less free and conquerable. That was all. In anticipation and in retrospect, it was a big thing -- but the experiences scarcely seem to live up to the gratutous hype that one imagines it should. Over the years my marathons have just become something more personal. And that is okay. I think that is where they belong.
For Dick Beardsley, that 80F day when he and Alberto Salazar ran sub 2:09 marathons, Dick finishing 0.6 sec out of first place, he was just happy to be there, just like me. Later in his life he underwent many injuries, most of them traumatic – like getting pulled into farm equipment, being hit by a truck, falling off of a cliff. Through the course of all of that he became addicted to prescription pain medicine, sadly addicted. So what his talk was all about was how we need to help people with similar conditions, not shy away from the stigma of drug addictions, see such cases as diseases too.
His was -- is -- such a sad but inspiring, heartfelt story: how he was a broken man so many times in his life and certain people took pity in him, believed in him and helped him to run the marathon that his life is. So many times he found himself in situations that he had no business living through. And he has. Wow.
Now he lives in Austin, TX. Someone from the audience asked him if he would be interested in running the Austin Marathon. He acknowledged that sure it’s in the back of his mind (it would certainly be a Hollywood sort of story, eh?), but with all that he has put his body through – most recently a knee replacement – he is just pleased to be able to run just over 3 miles in 30 min.
To hear him say so made me smile. I too have thought about running another marathon. Having had my foot reconstructed about 5 ½ years ago and being able to pick up running again 3 years ago, I smile to think about it. Now I can run 3-4 days per week, and just this past Sunday surrounded by singing birds, a sunny day & the first signs of spring, I clipped off a 10 mile training run at about an 8 minute pace. In the last mile or so, I was beginning to think that maybe a marathon was again soon possible… maybe. Then my left foot & leg hurt a little more than usual for the next couple of days ... So maybe not yet; maybe not yet. I am really just focusing on enjoying the magic of the road, the trail & the treadmill, happy to be in control of my addiction, happy to share it with friends who want to talk about it, happy to have had my day in the sun. That's what running is about.
04 April 2009
As The Polygon Turns: What's Going On (Episode 21)
“So you guys want to hear what’s going on?”
“Yeah, tell us.”
“All right so President Obama’s speech about the AF-PK strategy is getting rolled out at 10:30… “
“– you mean the one we read yesterday morning & started 7 minutes ago?”
“Yeah, that one… and … at 1330 Greg Mortenson will be speaking in the conference room, there are two seats available, you guys interested?”
“Really??? Can we? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I will tell Captain Krunch that you will fill them.” (Captain Krunch is not his real name, by the way.)
Holy crow! My speechwriter-partner Bill and I were so excited! We reminded ourselves of someone whom we had met a few weeks ago when our principal was going to speak to his organization. This man's name was Josh (no I am not kidding) and ever since that event, Bill and I periodically joke about how that guy always seemed like he was about to wet himself with excitement. Now we felt like Josh.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, Greg Mortenson is the author of Three Cups of Tea – well, the co-author. The important part is that he is the main character in this book that demonstrates the tremendous difference one man can make towards spreading peace through education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, one school at a time.
Most of the action in the book transpires in the mid to late 90s through post 9-11, and one can extrapolate that the work of Greg and CAI continues to flourish today. But in the circles that I work and I would even argue that in the regular stories that one reads about or hears in the news, one seldom finds word or even signs of progress and hope in that area of the world.
So we got up to the conference room a little early and had our pick of seats – people in this building always run late. It was your basic conference room: a single large mahogany table with about a dozen leather chairs and laptops and another 15 or so more chairs lining three walls within two feet of the table. At the far end of the room, at the foot of the table, was a big screen display for presentations or video teleconferences; and above that was displayed the time of day in Local, Zulu, Bagdad, Stuttgart, Kabul, Hawaii, San Diego, etc..
Eventually nearly all of the seats were filled by people in the building, some of whom I recognized, all of whom I wondered if they had read Three Cups of Tea and were as excited as Bill and I were. If we’d been kids, dogs, or Rain Man, we would have been unable to sit still to save our lives.
The conference room door was open and Greg came strolling in with Captain Krunch in tow. He was beaming his characteristically big smile that I had seen in the pictures of his book – a smile that looked like the smile kids draw on Mr. Sun, a smile that you think people only put on for pictures. For Greg, this was how he was, how he is, how he approaches people, how he talks about his work, and how he instantly puts everyone at ease, makes everyone a believer. At this moment I vowed to myself that I would smile more often – whenever I get the chance. His smile made me feel great! I want to make people around me feel great too.
The local time on the clock was 1333, the time in Kabul 2233. Greg had flown here from Afghanistan that morning and wanted to give us an update about the situation over there from his eyes, familiarize us with his story, and take any questions people had. What I have since realized – actually I just figured out when I was putting links into this blog – is that during this recent trip in the region there was a ceremony in Islamabad where the government of Pakistan conferred upon Greg their country’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his courage and humanitarian effort to promote education, and literacy in rural areas for the last fifteen years. Hmmmn.
So anyway, he gave his quick "elevator speech" about how he got into doing what he was doing and why he believes in it. He quoted to us a proverb that says if you educate a boy you educate one man, if you educate a girl you educate a village -- because boys will eventually leave or work for themselves, but women are centers of the home and the community.
"Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news?" he asked us. I was sitting about three feet from where he was standing talking to us from the head of the table. I couldn't stop smiling a big goofy grin. I just kept thinking 'This guy is great!'
"The Bad news," I excitedly responded. I don't think that anyone else had an opinion.
"Okay," he smiled at me, "I'll tell you the bad news first." I rubbed my hands together in a 'this is going to be good' fashion. "The bad news is that since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, over 600 schools in Afghanistan and over 200 in the tribal areas of Pakistan have been bombed or destroyed." A collective feeling of crappiness came over us, we all sort of nodded and held our heads steady, accepting this consequence of our actions.
"But the good news is... The good news is... is there anyone from the press here?" Greg asked looking around.
"No, they were not invited," CAPT Krunch offered.
"Well, okay. Good. But here is a statistic that you never hear in the press -- and it is a great statistic: good news. In 2000, at the height of the Taliban, 7,000 students, all boys attended school. Now, at the end of 2008 anyway, 7.2 million students, boys and girls, attend school in Afghanistan and the FATA area of Pakistan! Isn't that great?! That is the largest percentage rise in student attendance of any area of the world! So we're doing it. There is success! You are doing good things. I do not want you guys to despair."
Over the course of the next 45 min to an hour he talked to us about the importance of relationships, drinking tea, listening to the people, but also making them earn everything that you give them. For example if CAI is going to build a 2,500 sqft school for a village, they will provide materials, skilled labor, and lunch for the workers every day they work; the village has to provide 2,000 hrs of manual labor. He says he gets a lot of grumbling at first, but the only way the village is going to have a vested interest in protecting that school from the Taliban, from letting it be turned into a madrassa, is if the village people have put in sweat equity. He encouraged us to drive hard bargains and not to give out charity. He reminded us to not only think of ourselves as leaders, but as teachers. And don't forget, never forget it is all about the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is who all of this is for. What we are doing, the relationships we are building, the schools, the training of security forces... it is for generations, not something determined by or that could be measured by one, two, five or ten year budget cycles; it is a generational commitment. That is how the enemy, the violent extremists think about it.
It was such a treat to listen to a man with such wisdom, such humility. He really made us feel like he was part of our team, telling us what we've been doing right, helping to steer us towards what he has seen could be the right thing for the future, sharing with us his failures and frustrations... just helping to pull us along given what is going on.
“Yeah, tell us.”
“All right so President Obama’s speech about the AF-PK strategy is getting rolled out at 10:30… “
“– you mean the one we read yesterday morning & started 7 minutes ago?”
“Yeah, that one… and … at 1330 Greg Mortenson will be speaking in the conference room, there are two seats available, you guys interested?”
“Really??? Can we? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I will tell Captain Krunch that you will fill them.” (Captain Krunch is not his real name, by the way.)
Holy crow! My speechwriter-partner Bill and I were so excited! We reminded ourselves of someone whom we had met a few weeks ago when our principal was going to speak to his organization. This man's name was Josh (no I am not kidding) and ever since that event, Bill and I periodically joke about how that guy always seemed like he was about to wet himself with excitement. Now we felt like Josh.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, Greg Mortenson is the author of Three Cups of Tea – well, the co-author. The important part is that he is the main character in this book that demonstrates the tremendous difference one man can make towards spreading peace through education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, one school at a time.
Most of the action in the book transpires in the mid to late 90s through post 9-11, and one can extrapolate that the work of Greg and CAI continues to flourish today. But in the circles that I work and I would even argue that in the regular stories that one reads about or hears in the news, one seldom finds word or even signs of progress and hope in that area of the world.
So we got up to the conference room a little early and had our pick of seats – people in this building always run late. It was your basic conference room: a single large mahogany table with about a dozen leather chairs and laptops and another 15 or so more chairs lining three walls within two feet of the table. At the far end of the room, at the foot of the table, was a big screen display for presentations or video teleconferences; and above that was displayed the time of day in Local, Zulu, Bagdad, Stuttgart, Kabul, Hawaii, San Diego, etc..
Eventually nearly all of the seats were filled by people in the building, some of whom I recognized, all of whom I wondered if they had read Three Cups of Tea and were as excited as Bill and I were. If we’d been kids, dogs, or Rain Man, we would have been unable to sit still to save our lives.
The conference room door was open and Greg came strolling in with Captain Krunch in tow. He was beaming his characteristically big smile that I had seen in the pictures of his book – a smile that looked like the smile kids draw on Mr. Sun, a smile that you think people only put on for pictures. For Greg, this was how he was, how he is, how he approaches people, how he talks about his work, and how he instantly puts everyone at ease, makes everyone a believer. At this moment I vowed to myself that I would smile more often – whenever I get the chance. His smile made me feel great! I want to make people around me feel great too.
The local time on the clock was 1333, the time in Kabul 2233. Greg had flown here from Afghanistan that morning and wanted to give us an update about the situation over there from his eyes, familiarize us with his story, and take any questions people had. What I have since realized – actually I just figured out when I was putting links into this blog – is that during this recent trip in the region there was a ceremony in Islamabad where the government of Pakistan conferred upon Greg their country’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his courage and humanitarian effort to promote education, and literacy in rural areas for the last fifteen years. Hmmmn.
So anyway, he gave his quick "elevator speech" about how he got into doing what he was doing and why he believes in it. He quoted to us a proverb that says if you educate a boy you educate one man, if you educate a girl you educate a village -- because boys will eventually leave or work for themselves, but women are centers of the home and the community.
"Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news?" he asked us. I was sitting about three feet from where he was standing talking to us from the head of the table. I couldn't stop smiling a big goofy grin. I just kept thinking 'This guy is great!'
"The Bad news," I excitedly responded. I don't think that anyone else had an opinion.
"Okay," he smiled at me, "I'll tell you the bad news first." I rubbed my hands together in a 'this is going to be good' fashion. "The bad news is that since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, over 600 schools in Afghanistan and over 200 in the tribal areas of Pakistan have been bombed or destroyed." A collective feeling of crappiness came over us, we all sort of nodded and held our heads steady, accepting this consequence of our actions.
"But the good news is... The good news is... is there anyone from the press here?" Greg asked looking around.
"No, they were not invited," CAPT Krunch offered.
"Well, okay. Good. But here is a statistic that you never hear in the press -- and it is a great statistic: good news. In 2000, at the height of the Taliban, 7,000 students, all boys attended school. Now, at the end of 2008 anyway, 7.2 million students, boys and girls, attend school in Afghanistan and the FATA area of Pakistan! Isn't that great?! That is the largest percentage rise in student attendance of any area of the world! So we're doing it. There is success! You are doing good things. I do not want you guys to despair."
Over the course of the next 45 min to an hour he talked to us about the importance of relationships, drinking tea, listening to the people, but also making them earn everything that you give them. For example if CAI is going to build a 2,500 sqft school for a village, they will provide materials, skilled labor, and lunch for the workers every day they work; the village has to provide 2,000 hrs of manual labor. He says he gets a lot of grumbling at first, but the only way the village is going to have a vested interest in protecting that school from the Taliban, from letting it be turned into a madrassa, is if the village people have put in sweat equity. He encouraged us to drive hard bargains and not to give out charity. He reminded us to not only think of ourselves as leaders, but as teachers. And don't forget, never forget it is all about the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is who all of this is for. What we are doing, the relationships we are building, the schools, the training of security forces... it is for generations, not something determined by or that could be measured by one, two, five or ten year budget cycles; it is a generational commitment. That is how the enemy, the violent extremists think about it.
It was such a treat to listen to a man with such wisdom, such humility. He really made us feel like he was part of our team, telling us what we've been doing right, helping to steer us towards what he has seen could be the right thing for the future, sharing with us his failures and frustrations... just helping to pull us along given what is going on.
13 March 2009
As the Polygon Turns: Haste after waste, and other obstacles I faced (Episode 20)
I think I may have mentioned before how my life often presents me with great leveling moments. How just when I feel like I am “the shit,” so to speak, that I am invincible or at least super-capable, inanimate objects kick my ass.
Last week I started my new job as a speechwriter. Woo-hoo! Look at me and where my command of the English language and knowledge of the ways of the military and current affairs and world events has landed me! [picture me with fancy jazz hands here]
“Yeah, okay,” my other half tried to tell me, “you are still just goofy.” By my other half I don’t mean my husband, by the way – I mean literally the other, more skeptical, less celebratory side of my personality – is it literally “half” of me? Hell I don’t know. Quit bringing math into this!
So anyway, after four days into my new job I achieved a whole new echelon in stupidity – in the bathroom. As I entered the 3-stall restroom across the hall from my new workspace, I was a little disconcerted. The door to what I had established as "my stall" was shut. So too was the one to the roomy one (aka handicapped stall -but funny thing is, I haven't seen any handicapped access to this part of the building). That door (door #3) is balanced to always be shut, not just when it's occupied, though. As near as I could tell without schooching down, I was pretty sure it was unoccupied. Out of deference to the disabled and because I wasn't feeling claustrophobic on this particular Friday afternoon, I made my move towards stall #1 for to perform a simple #1 (if you must know). Bottom line is, I was feeling carefree and uncomplicated and was all about getting in, out, and back to my desk.
So I ducked into door #1. Some unforeseen apprehension overcame me at that moment, though, and I questioned whether the second stall really was occupied. Peering through the side slit I saw red fabric-- what is wrong with me? Sheesh, why did I do that?
Well, whatever, get over it. Just get in, get out & get back to work.
Okay, okay.
So I did -- I started; I got in, did my thing, reassembled my uniform, and hastily operated the lock with my left hand.
Haste after waste, makes…
The latch pinched the top of my thumb, causing me to bleed quite copiously. I tried to wash up, but ultimately all I could do short of fabricating a tourniquet was to layer and wrap a paper towel around my truncated thumb nubbin.
And that just tipped off a string of minor mishaps for the remainder of the afternoon: I dumped the anti-holes from the hole puncher tray... all over the floor under my chair, I banged my knee on the edge of the file cabinet, I improperly duplexed a speech I tried to print, I spilled water down my front... BUT I didn't -- I DID NOT get one speck of blood on my set of speech cards! Tah-dah. I am not so retarded after all.
Later on after I had some time to collect my thoughts and lick my literal and figurative wounds, I remarked aloud, “I can’t believe I hurt myself in the Head!”
“You hurt your head too!???” my Air Force buddy said from the other side of the cubicle wall.
“Huh? …no the bathroom.”
“Oh yeah, Navy… head, right. That was dumb. I almost thought we were going to have to get you a helmet.”
Recalling other bathroom party mishaps that I have had (forehead bruises post-christmas party puking), I almost had to agree with him. Some days I may secretly act like I should be riding the short bus, I don't believe that have fully devolved to needing to wear a helmet (all the time) just yet.
Last week I started my new job as a speechwriter. Woo-hoo! Look at me and where my command of the English language and knowledge of the ways of the military and current affairs and world events has landed me! [picture me with fancy jazz hands here]
“Yeah, okay,” my other half tried to tell me, “you are still just goofy.” By my other half I don’t mean my husband, by the way – I mean literally the other, more skeptical, less celebratory side of my personality – is it literally “half” of me? Hell I don’t know. Quit bringing math into this!
So anyway, after four days into my new job I achieved a whole new echelon in stupidity – in the bathroom. As I entered the 3-stall restroom across the hall from my new workspace, I was a little disconcerted. The door to what I had established as "my stall" was shut. So too was the one to the roomy one (aka handicapped stall -but funny thing is, I haven't seen any handicapped access to this part of the building). That door (door #3) is balanced to always be shut, not just when it's occupied, though. As near as I could tell without schooching down, I was pretty sure it was unoccupied. Out of deference to the disabled and because I wasn't feeling claustrophobic on this particular Friday afternoon, I made my move towards stall #1 for to perform a simple #1 (if you must know). Bottom line is, I was feeling carefree and uncomplicated and was all about getting in, out, and back to my desk.
So I ducked into door #1. Some unforeseen apprehension overcame me at that moment, though, and I questioned whether the second stall really was occupied. Peering through the side slit I saw red fabric-- what is wrong with me? Sheesh, why did I do that?
Well, whatever, get over it. Just get in, get out & get back to work.
Okay, okay.
So I did -- I started; I got in, did my thing, reassembled my uniform, and hastily operated the lock with my left hand.
Haste after waste, makes…
The latch pinched the top of my thumb, causing me to bleed quite copiously. I tried to wash up, but ultimately all I could do short of fabricating a tourniquet was to layer and wrap a paper towel around my truncated thumb nubbin.
And that just tipped off a string of minor mishaps for the remainder of the afternoon: I dumped the anti-holes from the hole puncher tray... all over the floor under my chair, I banged my knee on the edge of the file cabinet, I improperly duplexed a speech I tried to print, I spilled water down my front... BUT I didn't -- I DID NOT get one speck of blood on my set of speech cards! Tah-dah. I am not so retarded after all.
Later on after I had some time to collect my thoughts and lick my literal and figurative wounds, I remarked aloud, “I can’t believe I hurt myself in the Head!”
“You hurt your head too!???” my Air Force buddy said from the other side of the cubicle wall.
“Huh? …no the bathroom.”
“Oh yeah, Navy… head, right. That was dumb. I almost thought we were going to have to get you a helmet.”
Recalling other bathroom party mishaps that I have had (forehead bruises post-christmas party puking), I almost had to agree with him. Some days I may secretly act like I should be riding the short bus, I don't believe that have fully devolved to needing to wear a helmet (all the time) just yet.
11 February 2009
One of the Heard
Wherever I am, I never lack a good conversationalist - or at least a willing ear; for I am always willing to talk (and listen) to myself. Some (namely, my father) might attribute this penchant to my sizable ears, others (you know who you are!) to a barely controllable level of insanity; but whatever the case I would like to share some of the conversations of the earlier part of this week with you.
Monday, while walking down the passageway, out of the building, just another rat navigating the maze:
"A lot of people who work here have hearing aids."
"What!?"
"I SAID: A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WORK HERE WEAR HEARING AIDS!"
"Oh, I agree. I heard you the first time."
Tuesday, while passing by some geese during my run along the Potomac:
"Hey geese! My dog REALLY loves your poop!"
He does! To him they are little snackie treats ripe for him to scoop up from the ground, and toss back into his little gullet. Ew, gross-- I know! I try not to let him. When we're on a walk through a park near our house, there is a section of path that is a veritable minefield of geesetreats.
Anyway, I was in such a cheerful, beneficent mood, I felt star struck by the geese and couldn't help but relay to them how delectable my boy has found their feces. I figured it would brighten their day.
Shortly thereafter, I came upon a woman wearing the same make & brand of running shoes that were propelling me along. She was little, and as I passed her (I may have deliberately picked it up a bit), I said [to myself] "my pair goes faster than yours!" I'd been passed and beaten by women of her singular stature before, so I couldn't help but feel like this was but another chapter in a lifetime grudge match.
The scenario reminded me a little bit of an ongoing rivalry my father used to have with a man named Muckenhopf. My father is not a small man: 6'2", around 200 lbs when he was in his best shape - hence where I got my size. This Muckenhopf character was all of 155 lbs, dripping wet and measured maybe 5'10", as I recall. He had a son Carl who was, I think, 3 grades ahead of my brother (who was one ahead of me). Carl was a "kid" who had always been regarded as a weird bird on account of reports of him being regularly seen roaming the empty hallways of school, after hours, wearing a long overcoat, head down, scrunched brow, muttering equations and striking his hand with his fist. Most considered him to be a math and science genius, but a nutjob of the first water.
Carl's father always had a crazy look in his eye -- never more so than when he streaked (which is to say he was running full tilt - not that he was naked) past my father during a running race.
Completely out of breath, sweat dripping and flitting everywhere as he shook out his arms, he'd find my dad at the end of the chute or in the post-race gathering area and inquire, "What age category are you in?!"
EVERY race we saw him in (which was as much as a couple of times a month in the spring, summer, and fall), he would play out the same scenario whether he had passed my dad or it had been the other way around, although it was the former more often than the latter - a point which I make not to denigrate my father - no, no never - but to show what a shallow, pitiful individual this carcass of a man was. The thing is, he was at least 10 years older than my dad. It didn't take us long to figure that out (like once). Clearly his son had gotten his penchant for arithmetic from his mother.
Muckenhopf’s most reprehensible display of such behavior was at a 5-mile Turkey Trot. The first place prize for the winner of each age category was a large turkey. Being so visibly malnourished with the prospect of a “Mrs. Sprat” wife and brainiac son to feed at home, he may have had extra incentive to kick butt, but Dad and I were unconvinced that such familial pressures justified wonton amnesia. Anyway, I had started out the race a little slower than usual and I was behind Dad and passed him with a couple of miles to go. As I passed him we exchanged our typical father-daughter pleasantries, but between his ta-choo-choo huffing and puffing, Dad relayed to me that the dreaded Muckenhopf was ahead of him. Ever eager to please, I promised, “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll put him away.” And put him away I did. Dad had picked it up too, but still he finished about 10-15 seconds behind zie emaciated German. While they were still in the shoot, Dad struggling to catch his breath, Muckenhopf sheepishly started to ask him the perennial question… but before the walking cadaver could get a word out, my father blurted, "I will NEVER be in your age category! Don't worry, I am NOT going to take your Turkey (you Turkey)!"
True vindication occurred, however, one glorious late summer evening. I had accompanied Dad to Easton, PA where he ran a 4-mile Master’s race on the towpath along the mighty Delaware River. I was familiar with the course and throughout the race I ran about, ostensibly cheering on the runners, but really scouting out the competition for Dad. During my recon, I determined that Muckenhopf was on his tail, about 20-30 seconds behind. I quickly scooted back up ahead of Dad (who was really working!), paced him for the last half mile and cheered him on: "Come on, Dad! Looking tough! This is a great time! -and you're ahead of Muckenhopf!" Not too long after Dad barrelled across the finish line, in flopped Muckenhopf. Physically exhausted and perhaps psychologically pummeled, he didn’t even ask the question.
So while my lifetime grudge match against little women has rarely gotten so heated (or rarely been so successful – perhaps because I have never verbally confronted them), I had to simper a little as I passed my smaller same shoe buddy on the path. Silly goose!
Monday, while walking down the passageway, out of the building, just another rat navigating the maze:
"A lot of people who work here have hearing aids."
"What!?"
"I SAID: A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO WORK HERE WEAR HEARING AIDS!"
"Oh, I agree. I heard you the first time."
Tuesday, while passing by some geese during my run along the Potomac:
"Hey geese! My dog REALLY loves your poop!"
He does! To him they are little snackie treats ripe for him to scoop up from the ground, and toss back into his little gullet. Ew, gross-- I know! I try not to let him. When we're on a walk through a park near our house, there is a section of path that is a veritable minefield of geesetreats.
Anyway, I was in such a cheerful, beneficent mood, I felt star struck by the geese and couldn't help but relay to them how delectable my boy has found their feces. I figured it would brighten their day.
Shortly thereafter, I came upon a woman wearing the same make & brand of running shoes that were propelling me along. She was little, and as I passed her (I may have deliberately picked it up a bit), I said [to myself] "my pair goes faster than yours!" I'd been passed and beaten by women of her singular stature before, so I couldn't help but feel like this was but another chapter in a lifetime grudge match.
The scenario reminded me a little bit of an ongoing rivalry my father used to have with a man named Muckenhopf. My father is not a small man: 6'2", around 200 lbs when he was in his best shape - hence where I got my size. This Muckenhopf character was all of 155 lbs, dripping wet and measured maybe 5'10", as I recall. He had a son Carl who was, I think, 3 grades ahead of my brother (who was one ahead of me). Carl was a "kid" who had always been regarded as a weird bird on account of reports of him being regularly seen roaming the empty hallways of school, after hours, wearing a long overcoat, head down, scrunched brow, muttering equations and striking his hand with his fist. Most considered him to be a math and science genius, but a nutjob of the first water.
Carl's father always had a crazy look in his eye -- never more so than when he streaked (which is to say he was running full tilt - not that he was naked) past my father during a running race.
Completely out of breath, sweat dripping and flitting everywhere as he shook out his arms, he'd find my dad at the end of the chute or in the post-race gathering area and inquire, "What age category are you in?!"
EVERY race we saw him in (which was as much as a couple of times a month in the spring, summer, and fall), he would play out the same scenario whether he had passed my dad or it had been the other way around, although it was the former more often than the latter - a point which I make not to denigrate my father - no, no never - but to show what a shallow, pitiful individual this carcass of a man was. The thing is, he was at least 10 years older than my dad. It didn't take us long to figure that out (like once). Clearly his son had gotten his penchant for arithmetic from his mother.
Muckenhopf’s most reprehensible display of such behavior was at a 5-mile Turkey Trot. The first place prize for the winner of each age category was a large turkey. Being so visibly malnourished with the prospect of a “Mrs. Sprat” wife and brainiac son to feed at home, he may have had extra incentive to kick butt, but Dad and I were unconvinced that such familial pressures justified wonton amnesia. Anyway, I had started out the race a little slower than usual and I was behind Dad and passed him with a couple of miles to go. As I passed him we exchanged our typical father-daughter pleasantries, but between his ta-choo-choo huffing and puffing, Dad relayed to me that the dreaded Muckenhopf was ahead of him. Ever eager to please, I promised, “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll put him away.” And put him away I did. Dad had picked it up too, but still he finished about 10-15 seconds behind zie emaciated German. While they were still in the shoot, Dad struggling to catch his breath, Muckenhopf sheepishly started to ask him the perennial question… but before the walking cadaver could get a word out, my father blurted, "I will NEVER be in your age category! Don't worry, I am NOT going to take your Turkey (you Turkey)!"
True vindication occurred, however, one glorious late summer evening. I had accompanied Dad to Easton, PA where he ran a 4-mile Master’s race on the towpath along the mighty Delaware River. I was familiar with the course and throughout the race I ran about, ostensibly cheering on the runners, but really scouting out the competition for Dad. During my recon, I determined that Muckenhopf was on his tail, about 20-30 seconds behind. I quickly scooted back up ahead of Dad (who was really working!), paced him for the last half mile and cheered him on: "Come on, Dad! Looking tough! This is a great time! -and you're ahead of Muckenhopf!" Not too long after Dad barrelled across the finish line, in flopped Muckenhopf. Physically exhausted and perhaps psychologically pummeled, he didn’t even ask the question.
So while my lifetime grudge match against little women has rarely gotten so heated (or rarely been so successful – perhaps because I have never verbally confronted them), I had to simper a little as I passed my smaller same shoe buddy on the path. Silly goose!
02 February 2009
As the Polygon Turns: Too Punny (Episode 19)
So this morning in my inbasket, I had a "mandatory appointment" email waiting for me. Son of abitch! I thought -- actually I may have said that aloud. Because my coworkers jerked their collective heads my way and looked in askance about what had irritated me now.
"I have urinalysis A-gen!"
"Why's it gotta be his analysis?" Mojo inquired, thumbing towards Big Tony.
Eew, I thought. Eew. I know he was just trying to be funny, but Eew.
Fortunately someone quickly brought up Michael Phelps. Mojo hadn't heard that the Olympian had been photographed sucking on a bong, so I filled him in.
[Quite the little newsey one aren't I?]
Then Tony asked, "wasn't he on Corn Flakes and supposed to be on a Wheaties box next?"
"Yeah," I quipped, "only it's gonna be spelled W-E-E-D-I-E-S!"
Ah, shoot… then we were all no good!
So I went to my mandatory appointment and spent the better part of about an hour reading People magazine with an uncomfortable tension in my bladder. Gotta love it. Some lady didn’t actually have to go and sat in the stall for over 15 minutes trying… sheesh. That was just the first person I was behind – or at least after. Then when I was finally up to verify my data before taking my blessed cup into the sanctum sanctorum (to use a term of my father’s), I was asked to wait for the person who just came out, empty of bladder, full of bravado.
“”Don’t mind me, I will just be over hear dancing next to the trickling waterfall,” I said. They didn’t mind. I did. I did, but I managed. Only once have I lost it, but that is a blog for another day---maybe never.
So I did my thing, peed on command, chatted with the delightful Tech Sergeant, and went on my way; which is to say I left.
When I returned to the office, I overheard my boss asking someone else in cubicle land, “So did they give you a diploma or a graduation certification?”
“No,” I said, “but I didn’t even study.” Oh, he wasn’t talking to me. It didn’t stop me. I was on a roll.
Speaking of rolls – or at least buns. Later on, I met an old woman who is a retired Air Force General and the mother of thirteen. Still married to the father of her 13 children after 57 years, she goes by Twinkles and he goes by Big Bird. It was really sweet – she refers to her husband as “The Finest Fanny in the Force.”
How can you top that? How can you top that?
Shoot, I can't. It took me about a month to come up with this pitifully goofy entry.
"I have urinalysis A-gen!"
"Why's it gotta be his analysis?" Mojo inquired, thumbing towards Big Tony.
Eew, I thought. Eew. I know he was just trying to be funny, but Eew.
Fortunately someone quickly brought up Michael Phelps. Mojo hadn't heard that the Olympian had been photographed sucking on a bong, so I filled him in.
[Quite the little newsey one aren't I?]
Then Tony asked, "wasn't he on Corn Flakes and supposed to be on a Wheaties box next?"
"Yeah," I quipped, "only it's gonna be spelled W-E-E-D-I-E-S!"
Ah, shoot… then we were all no good!
So I went to my mandatory appointment and spent the better part of about an hour reading People magazine with an uncomfortable tension in my bladder. Gotta love it. Some lady didn’t actually have to go and sat in the stall for over 15 minutes trying… sheesh. That was just the first person I was behind – or at least after. Then when I was finally up to verify my data before taking my blessed cup into the sanctum sanctorum (to use a term of my father’s), I was asked to wait for the person who just came out, empty of bladder, full of bravado.
“”Don’t mind me, I will just be over hear dancing next to the trickling waterfall,” I said. They didn’t mind. I did. I did, but I managed. Only once have I lost it, but that is a blog for another day---maybe never.
So I did my thing, peed on command, chatted with the delightful Tech Sergeant, and went on my way; which is to say I left.
When I returned to the office, I overheard my boss asking someone else in cubicle land, “So did they give you a diploma or a graduation certification?”
“No,” I said, “but I didn’t even study.” Oh, he wasn’t talking to me. It didn’t stop me. I was on a roll.
Speaking of rolls – or at least buns. Later on, I met an old woman who is a retired Air Force General and the mother of thirteen. Still married to the father of her 13 children after 57 years, she goes by Twinkles and he goes by Big Bird. It was really sweet – she refers to her husband as “The Finest Fanny in the Force.”
How can you top that? How can you top that?
Shoot, I can't. It took me about a month to come up with this pitifully goofy entry.
13 January 2009
The Stuff of Life
People are really the stuff of life.
I remember when I was in fourth grade and a local author visited our class to talk about her books that we had recently read, A Carp in the Bathtub and Thank You Jackie Robinson. I think her name was Barbara Cohen. Anyway, the part of her talk that really stuck with 9 year old me was her answer as to why she became an author. She said she just had an inclination to write. While other kids were doodling when they were bored, she would write. How odd, 9 year old me thought. Sounds like a lot more work than doodling; but then the more I thought about it, I recalled that doodling was hard work for me anyway too; for I just wasn't into it. I never knew what to draw. So maybe it would be fun to wrootle. I was no prodigy, however, and it was not like my writing career took off there (or even now for that matter... maybe by age 39…); but now, whether from that inspiration, a deficit in doodling talent, or some other inspiration, I wrootle stories and character sketches in my head when the goings on about me fail to hold my interest.
Last week I was at a conference of supposedly like-minded, similarly mission-oriented people. Having been in these situations many times before, I am always delightfully aghast at the variety of people, their quirks, habits, and ways of expressing themselves. I just can't help but wrootle about them.
First, there is the head moderator of the conference, a Danny Devito clone, alike in looks as well as mannerisms, leading me to hypothesize that if said demeanor is inexorably wedded to such a physique.
Then there is a young boy – not sure if his momma knows he’s here - who isn’t really paying attention. His sole focus is on how much Coke or Sunkist he can drink (he’s toted in his own 2L bottle) and on coloring. Yes, coloring. The silhouette of the mountains depicted on the lodge stationary is just too alluring that he has to outline it, color it in, then replicate it over the landscape of the rest of the pad of paper. The speakers at this conference could be delivering the key to achieving world peace in our time (and maybe they are!!!), but no, this boy remains transfixed on his coloring. Seriously, it is all I can do to prevent myself from leaning over and saying in a Church Lady voice, “do we need to get you a coloring book, son?”
In stark contrast to Peter Pan is the Blahblah man at the end of my row. Oh, you know him. He prefaces his tiresome questions with pretentious exhibitions of his scholarship. Like: “given what Soandso had to say about blazieblah in light of Hoochiedamma’s theory about serious beans, do you think that one could draw the conclusion about the relative light year process of velveeta on rye with just a hint of cayenne, but only if Doofindagger’s himerschlammer were taken into account, right?” Whatever Dude!
Ah, back to someone more amusing. Day 3, a pair of women came in and chose two seats right in front of me. The one was super skinny and fussed a lot with her (unreal) bleach blonde curled hair. I dubbed her Goldilocks. The other had the grace of a circus elephant – and that is exactly what we thought had entered the room when her enormous butt brushed every upstanding water bottle on our table and set them all awobble. Since her friend was Goldilocks, I felt it only fitting to assume that she was a Bear.
Within earshot behind me, I was lucky enough to hear the Tic. An older gentleman who was nice enough, but spoke like everything he was about to say was funny--- but that he had to hold back. His defining characteristic, however, was his (nervous?) tic, a soft oinky-snorty noise that sounded like thick nails on a chalkboard, scratching down a couple of inches at a time, then abruptly stopping. How his nasal passages had the ability to produce such a noise is anybody’s guess.
The last truly notable character was one of the presenters whose voice, or at least manner of speaking, was exactly like Dr. Evil's. He would strangely stress certain syllables and then… he would pause… for effect, but the phrases that would follow the pauses… had little apparent significance. For example, he would say, “Afghani… STAHN” and talk about certain efforts “that were… [wait for it] …unsuccessful.” Seriously, does he know how funny this sounds?! Probably not. No, probably not. “Throw me a frickin bone here! I’m the boss, need the info!” Cracked me up!
Over the course of the week, I actually befriended or at least beassociated (that's what you'd call it if you made an associate, but not quite a friend, right?) most of these people. Did doing so make me feel guilty for my caricature of them, for this wrootling? No, not really; although it does make me smirk a little more than usual when talking to them. They are all very nice people... all ingredients in the stuff of life.
I remember when I was in fourth grade and a local author visited our class to talk about her books that we had recently read, A Carp in the Bathtub and Thank You Jackie Robinson. I think her name was Barbara Cohen. Anyway, the part of her talk that really stuck with 9 year old me was her answer as to why she became an author. She said she just had an inclination to write. While other kids were doodling when they were bored, she would write. How odd, 9 year old me thought. Sounds like a lot more work than doodling; but then the more I thought about it, I recalled that doodling was hard work for me anyway too; for I just wasn't into it. I never knew what to draw. So maybe it would be fun to wrootle. I was no prodigy, however, and it was not like my writing career took off there (or even now for that matter... maybe by age 39…); but now, whether from that inspiration, a deficit in doodling talent, or some other inspiration, I wrootle stories and character sketches in my head when the goings on about me fail to hold my interest.
Last week I was at a conference of supposedly like-minded, similarly mission-oriented people. Having been in these situations many times before, I am always delightfully aghast at the variety of people, their quirks, habits, and ways of expressing themselves. I just can't help but wrootle about them.
First, there is the head moderator of the conference, a Danny Devito clone, alike in looks as well as mannerisms, leading me to hypothesize that if said demeanor is inexorably wedded to such a physique.
Then there is a young boy – not sure if his momma knows he’s here - who isn’t really paying attention. His sole focus is on how much Coke or Sunkist he can drink (he’s toted in his own 2L bottle) and on coloring. Yes, coloring. The silhouette of the mountains depicted on the lodge stationary is just too alluring that he has to outline it, color it in, then replicate it over the landscape of the rest of the pad of paper. The speakers at this conference could be delivering the key to achieving world peace in our time (and maybe they are!!!), but no, this boy remains transfixed on his coloring. Seriously, it is all I can do to prevent myself from leaning over and saying in a Church Lady voice, “do we need to get you a coloring book, son?”
In stark contrast to Peter Pan is the Blahblah man at the end of my row. Oh, you know him. He prefaces his tiresome questions with pretentious exhibitions of his scholarship. Like: “given what Soandso had to say about blazieblah in light of Hoochiedamma’s theory about serious beans, do you think that one could draw the conclusion about the relative light year process of velveeta on rye with just a hint of cayenne, but only if Doofindagger’s himerschlammer were taken into account, right?” Whatever Dude!
Ah, back to someone more amusing. Day 3, a pair of women came in and chose two seats right in front of me. The one was super skinny and fussed a lot with her (unreal) bleach blonde curled hair. I dubbed her Goldilocks. The other had the grace of a circus elephant – and that is exactly what we thought had entered the room when her enormous butt brushed every upstanding water bottle on our table and set them all awobble. Since her friend was Goldilocks, I felt it only fitting to assume that she was a Bear.
Within earshot behind me, I was lucky enough to hear the Tic. An older gentleman who was nice enough, but spoke like everything he was about to say was funny--- but that he had to hold back. His defining characteristic, however, was his (nervous?) tic, a soft oinky-snorty noise that sounded like thick nails on a chalkboard, scratching down a couple of inches at a time, then abruptly stopping. How his nasal passages had the ability to produce such a noise is anybody’s guess.
The last truly notable character was one of the presenters whose voice, or at least manner of speaking, was exactly like Dr. Evil's. He would strangely stress certain syllables and then… he would pause… for effect, but the phrases that would follow the pauses… had little apparent significance. For example, he would say, “Afghani… STAHN” and talk about certain efforts “that were… [wait for it] …unsuccessful.” Seriously, does he know how funny this sounds?! Probably not. No, probably not. “Throw me a frickin bone here! I’m the boss, need the info!” Cracked me up!
Over the course of the week, I actually befriended or at least beassociated (that's what you'd call it if you made an associate, but not quite a friend, right?) most of these people. Did doing so make me feel guilty for my caricature of them, for this wrootling? No, not really; although it does make me smirk a little more than usual when talking to them. They are all very nice people... all ingredients in the stuff of life.
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