The Final Countdown

When I open my mailbox and see Runner's World nestled between all the junk, I immediately smile, bounce resolutely back down my driveway, and remember all the reasons running has enriched my life.  So many reasons for which to be thankful indeed.

This morning I finished reading the September issue (hey, the target audience always likes to be ahead).  Of course I started with the article entitled "Break The Rules," so it was of no surprise that one of my favorite lines was contained therein:

We are each an experiment of one.

Thank god, was the first thing I thought.  How could I deal with two of me?

Last evening, I echoed that same sentiment as Liv and I were at the High School registering for her Junior year, which is crazy enough in and of itself.  An extra $35 bucks so she could park in the "general lot."  Generally, this is costing me an arm and a leg and a whole lot of lost sleep.  She is a mini-me through and through, and coupled with my ability to remember the past in all its pegged-legged Guess jeans, Coca-Cola sweatshirt wearing, 1982 Dodge Challenger stick shift driving glory, I may have to revert to some of my late '80's-early '90's tactics to get through these next few years.

For some reason when Liv retrieved her student ID, there were two cards.  Puzzled, she shuffled down the hallway - pretending still not to know me - when she mumbled sideways and over her shoulder, "Wonder why I have two?"

"I don't know, but lemme tell ya, parenting one of you is all I got.  Love you, babe, but one is enough."

She appreciates the same kind of humor as well.  Real-world is always way funnier to me than forced Jim Carrey-esque efforts.  And in real-time, as Liv and I stood in the never-ending parking permit line, I sent Chels a text.

Were WE this stupid in high school?

She replied immediately, as if she could sense my pain 3 hours away:  I think we were dumber.

Her response made me laugh x2.  Her word choice always cracks me up, along with her (usually) spot on insights.

"Well, for what it's worth, I STILL loathe stupid, fake cheerleaders.  They are the dumbest."

"Same!  Some things haven't changed!"

As I am inside what Europe annoyingly sang back in those all important, moral-forming '80's, I'm especially thankful I know what I like.  And definitely what I don't.

How Much Can You Know About Yourself if You've Never Been In a Fight?

It was early February and I hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time.  My friend and co-hort, Angela, had sent me a simply stated text:  “Stopped at a light by a White Castle.  Sign says they’re taking Valentine’s reservations.”

She has a way about her, that one.

She also has another friend whom she tells me about once in a while.  I don’t quite remember, I think her name is Charlie or Rocky or…wait.  It’s Phoebe.  That’s right.  Angela insists upon sharing stories about this woman with me, mostly because we like to note the extreme plausibility of an alter-ego existing.  A bedazzling one, to be certain.

Since Angela and I are good friends, obvious line-quoters, and do everything in good taste, we immediately agreed to crown Phoebe’s alter ego, “Regina Phalange.”  In reality, however, when surrounded by the typical commoner, her majesty regularly goes by “Pheebs” for short.  Not that she’s short, mind you, but there’s something intimate about calling someone by a name other than their first one.  And we like Pheebs.

We like her because she is messy.  Not unkempt Zul seeks the Keymaster messy; experience messy.  Apparently, she’s been through a lot of crap in her life – of the usual and unusual variety alike – and remembers all of it.  Hell, she can even remember to turn the stove off in twenty minutes. 

Not only do I sit Indian-style with my hands clasped the moment Angela dials my extension and starts the conversation with, “You will LOVE this one,” I also cringe in anticipation, waiting to hear about Pheebs’ latest stalker-de-jour.  No matter how jacked up the story unfolds, I always end up channeling an incurable strain of sorority-cheerleader harpy.   I want to both laugh in Pheebs’ face and befriend her all in one fell swoop.   But mostly, I just want answers to questions.  There will be so many!

“He was how old?  What was she gonna wear, leotards, two-tanks, stilettos, and gold bangle bracelets adorning her entire radius and ulna?  Good god, like she even knows how to crack gum anymore.”

“She seriously threw a right hook when he wouldn’t leave her alone?  Like, Fight Club punch? Good thing she can run fast.”

The stories, while endless and requiring no caption of “You cannot make this s@!# up,” are wearisome.  They’ve quickly become exhausting to both Angela and me, so I can only imagine how Pheebs sometimes feels about all the feculence. 

Lately and admittedly, I’ve been letting Angela go into voicemail, even if I’m in the office when she calls.  Her delivery is more monotone, the stories more hackneyed, and my patience for platitudes has only ever been rivaled by one person.

“Really, that jerk face tried to impress her by talking about his Rolex, his place in Aspen, and the slew of Swiss models and vehicles he stores in his checkerboard floor-lined museum of a garage?  You and I both know she couldn’t care less about money, and that loser can’t tell time, ski, do it, or drive, so c’mon!  Tell me what Pheebs did next!”

“She didn’t do anything, didn’t say a word.   She was just deathly silent when I asked her about the whole thing.  And that’s when I knew she meant it.”

Pheebs giving up is like Moses devouring that pork chop he’s holding in his hairy palm.

Yet the elephant-like irony which Angela and I were grappling over was this:  don’t you have to try to accomplish something first, before actually waving the white flag?  Pheebs hadn’t given up, because she hadn’t been trying.  She’d been avoiding, ignoring, and once in a while appeasing just to keep her relentless friends off her back.

Why did she or anyone else have to adhere to some absurd societal standard anyway?  Her jerk friends know full well she doesn’t need some dude for any of the reasons those broke, wrinkly, perma-smile, sequin-wearing bamboozlers on the prowl at Chop’s need dudes.  Those Midwest floozies are the ones hanging on to every manther’s word which you know they can’t hear over everyone else’s fake laughter anyway.  They make total spectacles of themselves by tossing their fried hair back until an innocent, twirled up finger involuntarily catapults their head right back into place.  Or, conveniently, right smack dab into Richard Rich Sr.’s lap.  Hook.  Line.  Something.

Not to mention, one super-duper jaded Pheebs.

Yet, she had gotten to a place where she was totally fine with her new normal.  And I had selfishly accepted that no more jacked up stories would be coming my way, and Angela and I would be relegated to discussing only real business.

Enter the cliché.

“You will LOVE this one.”

“Nope, I can’t take hearing about it so what else you got?”

“Seriously, this is different.  She wasn’t looking.  It was this whole thing, totally on the up and up, she met him, he was kind of aloof so you know…she was immediately intrigued.”

“Whatever, we know how this story ends.”

I was in no mood to hear about how someone I thought I respected had relented.  How she was now two-timing her druthers in favor of some guy she met when she wasn’t looking.  Hey Nicole Kidman, I don’t give a flying you-know-what if he is Tom Cruise.  Open your eyes.  You have 8-ish inches on him. 

“Fine, I give, what’d she say?”

“Mostly it’s what she didn’t say.  I could tell by the embarrassingly annoying giggle-thing as she was trying to tell me.   I guess it’s easy and …

“Wait,” I interrupt.  “Can he keep up with her in ways that matter?”

“I asked her the exact same thing, because you and I both know what happens when they either can’t or refuse to try.” 

“And?”

“She told me begrudgingly, that was a rhetorical question.  Apparently, he isn’t one bit off-put by her sometimes smarts, mostly because he is smarter; but you and I also know hell will freeze over before she ever admits it to him.”

“Uh-oh.  She never says any of that.”

“I know.  And there was more, something along the lines of wanting to be with him when she wasn’t, thinking about him way more than she ever anticipated, kicking his ass at all-things Milton Bradley, haiku-writing, running, and a bunch of other Hot Pockety gooey kinda stuff that made me want to puke.”

“Yikes, Pheebs is in trouble,” I say to Angela.

And we both just hung up.  Nothing else needed to be said.