“No shorts and fancy shoes today?” Armyrock asked me when I got on the bus last Friday morning. He’s always wearing his digi-army cammies and as near as I can tell most of his features and physique look like an undefined boulder. To myself (and now to you, I guess), I refer to him as the Armyrock.
“Nah,” I answered him, grinning from ear to ear, “I did get my run in last night before it rained, though.”
That’s right, sports fans… a run! And not just any run: a back to nature, screw the accoutrements, walk in the woods, gotta be good, flight for freedom run – nothin’ between me and the trail but a thin slice of toe-covering rubber. Yup. Just me and my FiveFingers.
Back when I was running regularly, often the measure of accomplishment during my runs was standard, obvious stuff like my pace, my distance, whether I felt like I wanted to puke or not … sometimes it was simply if I felt better when I finished than when I started.
But now… now, I tell myself, in this next chapter of my quest to be healed for good, for all time … now, I just feel like, hey… did I make it? Am I “looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid”? Yeah, yeah, yeah…
I dream of the days when again I can, on a whim, escape the air conditioning and brain numbing of the Polygon and prance along the river when the summer sprinklers are on … the pleasure of the Potomac pelting my perspiring perspicacious person … when I can take the long cuts and forget where I am …
I might start keeping track of my time and my mileage again then too … maybe… maybe not… looking like a true survivor and feeling like a little kid is enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah!
So yeah, when I wear my new and nifty so-called “fancy shoes” coming to and from work, I feel like I am getting away with something… almost like the opposite of the Emperor’s New Clothes. My FiveFingers make me feel like I am wearing nothing (on my feet) and no one seems to notice. So then, I get to grinning… and the smirk, as it always seems to, gives me away…
But this smirk is different … different from the smirk I get when my hair blows back and away when I walk inside from the courtyard and feel like a model must feel, tossing her locks in the face of a high speed floor fan at a photo shoot (not sure if i actually tossle my head or if i manage to restrain myself just to smirking) … different from the smirk that strikes me when I see Lungerman deep knee-bending in the p-way … different from the smirk that strikes me when I have cheeks full of treats too many to swallow at once … different from the smirk that strikes me when I hear horrific releases of bodily gas in an adjacent stall... Yup. This smirk is different from all of those minor manifestations of mischeviousness.
For you see, in my FiveFingers, I am not only doing something that I want to that seems to defy all logic and definitely defies what my doctors have told me … it makes me feel better, from my feet to the street!
...wait, that's not very far. But it sounded neat!
Hey, by the way, have I told you about Lungerman? I don’t think so.
He’s the latest Polygon personality i've found that's truly a caricature in and of himself. He’s about 5’7-5’9” tall, somewhere between 48 and 58 years old… maybe I am being generous. He could be a youthful looking 68 and only 5'6"; he has white hair and a full white beard, is of average build -- but NOT what i'd call svelte -- and normally he wears earth tone shirts and ties well coordinated with similarly earth toned slacks, a belt and some pedio-friendly footwear. Now I am all about pedio-friendly footwear (duh?), but UNLIKE Lungerman, I take my stretching and exercise regimen to the gym. That’s right: he has a whole host of what look like physical therapy/rehab light stretching exercises that he chooses to perform in the hallway and on the steps adjacent to our office. So what if it is the end of a dead end hallway where no one would venture by accident? Come on, Dude! Deep knee bends, rhythmic breathing, lunges, side bends, toe lifts… do you need to do them on these steps? What’s your job, anyway? I mean the guy is out there so often and for so long, that just in my comings and goings to and from the upstairs offices, I have his whole routine down pat.
I don’t think that he is getting away with anything.
Maybe I should tip him off to my fancy shoes trick.
