Roads, Mills, Laps

The world changes when it gets dark. You may not notice it when you zip around in your little car. But when you run in the city at night, you get a little show. It’s as if a curtain falls and I get to stumble around behind the stage.

I happened to run through the poor parts of town last night–past the ramshackle apartment complexes where the grass grows high and the kids play–unsupervised–on the busy street.

Some guy was at the bus stop–you see, there’s a convenient bus stop next to the shitty apartment complex that I’m writing about. I always get to see the good times going on at that bus stop. Know who rides the bus in my little town?

Guess.

The aint white–unless you count the retarded mop handler who works (and smiles) in the back room of Dunkin Donuts across the street; unless you count the drooling old man–the crazed, red-faced guy who’s missing pieces of his leather jacket. (What happened to it and where the hell is this guy perpetually “going”?)

Last night a lone person sat at that bus stop. I ran past him. He had taken off one of his shoes and was banging it incessantly on the ground. He banged it in time with the flashing caution light overhead. I don’t know what was going on. I just ran quickly across the street–dodging SUVs going infinity miles an hour enroute to go buy something

Maybe this shoe slapper, this lone bus passenger was mad at the world?

Maybe he didn’t like the local politicians planting their red, white, and blue eyesores-for-signs in front of his shit-for-an apartment complex?

Maybe he didn’t want to ride the bus? Who likes to wait for a bus? Who rides the bus in this town? Who has the patience to wait to go somewhere IN THIS TOWN?

A few miles later, in the dark, along the sides of the road (in the proverbial gutter) I passed a family of Mexicans. I don’t know where they were walking. A women was pushing a baby carriage; ahead of her, two men with sweatshirt hoods pulled over thier heads, their hands wedged in their baggy pockets rattled off 100mph Español .

The Salvation Army clothing deposit bins are on my route too; it’s always all good times over there too. Watching people scrounge for clothes at 11pm is a jolly experience. What happens is that these people, these shadows, hang out there and sift through clothes. From experience, I know that they wait for cars to drive in, bringing fresh things. They wait patiently while you dump the clothes into the bin and then when your back is turned, when you’re getting into your car to drive back to your little Spanish-style/Arts and Crafts movement-inspired home, your slice of American bohemia where you fret about organic milk and free range chicken, they pounce–tossing their scabbed and bruised tykes through the basketball hoop-sized hole in the bin as if they were organ grinder monkeys.

The organ grinder monkeys have flashlights in their hands. Their mission (handed down from the moms) is to find the best things in that dark void–the name brand items; the Gapkidz sweaters and the LittleRichKidStore trousers; last year’s fashions plucked from glimmering gold-plated racks by ueber competitive soccer moms in the superterrificglamor mall out yonder in King O’ Prussia–stuff no longer worth wearing.

As I near the end of my run, I get to run though a gauntlet of drunken college students in the middle of West Chester. Girls all decked to the nines, stumbling and laughing–dropping their cell phones, accidentially kicking them down the cobblestoned sidewalk. No more text messaging–berp-be-derp-be-do, ha, ha, flibbedy-flew!

Guys with their Phillies gear; their hats on backwards; their F-bombs; their machismo, their hubris. They’re in tow; going presumably to the same place. It’s the early twenties for these budding silverbacks and so it’s time to do stupid things and pretend that the world is one big oyster to deposit bodily fluids (seiminal fluid preferred!) into.

At the end of the run, after all is said and done, I find myself walking into Sam’s Pizza Island.

“‘One six pack of Corona,” I say with my finger in the air.

Two dirty men sit at a little plastic table and push cards back and forth. The Eagelz are on the television.

“Looks like they’re going to score,” I am told.

What do I SAY? Life these days is getting more and more difficult as I drift from one group of men to another–forever lost in the conversation, forever indifferent to balls flying in the air, to scoreboards, to cheerleaders, to hot dog vendors, fattened men–onetime sports heroes–behind tiny desks pontificating on WHATEVER.

Do you want to know something?

Do you know that a school in these parts had a public elementary school teacher that had a test and that this particular test happend to have a bonus question. Do you know what the bonus question was?

I don’t know what exactly the question was, all I know is it went supposedly something like this: “For 5 extra points, name the Phillies starting lineup.”

Of course this question was hard for the ESL kid–for the German kid too, who’s dad just brought her over here. (She can’t even find the bathroom let alone name big red’s center fielder.) And the Russian kid who’s parents can name all the Russian ice skaters going back to Katrina Kantorvich and Vasilly Smedlovinika. The Moroccan too–her father was once an elite runner and, despite his master’s status, STILL runs like 14-minute 5Ks as if he was out for walk in the Atlas mountains instead of spanking the fat asses of the underarmour-wearing, 24-minute-slogging yokels (the charlatans who are out doing striders in front of the starting lines of the Barney Fife memorial 5Ks). That little Moroccan girl: I’ll BET SHE knows who finished second in NYC yesterday.

For 5 points, name [fill in whatever the hell you happen to know]. How about that?

For 5 points, find the breach of separation of francise sporz team and state. [I am also told that the Phillies are congratulated during the morning annoucements; that the school lunches have Phillies cookies; that the green mascot thingamabobber pays visits. I hear that the buses fly world series pennants. I’ve seen pictures of the faculty: In order to show Philamaniac solidarity, they all wear jerseys with different numbers. The art teacher gets to be the famous slugger, Jobie Smeltins; the 2nd Grade special ed teacher is the catcher, Hank Graydnor. And the principle is the coach, Jerry “Bo” Budnitz. This is all true; this is what I get for my “tax” dollars.]

And you fret about God creeping into public schools: Ha!

Speaking of the almighty, now that the Phillies have found God and have touched Him gently on the face–have walked with Him and have received his bountiful blessings, it’s now time for the Eaglez to get R’ done.

It’s time to fly Eaglez fly.

On Eaglez wings–onward to victoree!
————
Robocalls for Christ

Since I live in a “swing state” that really isn’t, because there is a major ass kicking about ready to happen, I get all these Robocalls.

The jolly old Camp McCain has phoned me five times in one day. Since I have caller id, it’s obvious when it comes in that it’s going to be one of those “DID YOU KNOW THAT OBAMA HANGS OUT WITH TERRORISTS?” dealios.

“DID YOU KNOW THAT OBAMA PARTIED WITH HOLLYWOOD WHEN MCCAIN RUSHED TO WASHINGTON TO DEAL WITH THE ECONOMIC CRISIS?”

“DID YOU KNOW THAT OBAMA IS..[insert BAD thing]…BAD, BAD, BAD.

I even got a thing in the mail that shows a black and white picture of Obama in a dark room, supposedly hangin’ with BAD GUYS. You know when someone’s in black and white on this things that he’s the “BAD GUY”. And BAD GUYS make me SCARED–they hang out with BAD TERRORISTS, so when I limp into the polling station with my cane dragging, smelling like a mixture of piss and an entire pharmacy’s worth of designer drugs, I’ll put two and two together: the BAD GUY on the postcard is BAD for America. (Pssst: he also doesn’t look like you, too.) And so I won’t vote for him. I won’t even vote for his running mate, even though he’s a hardscrabble, scrib-scrabbler from Scranton. No. I will vote for the guy who looks like me–the American hero; the guy who wears a Navy hat and fights for freedom wherever there’s trouble; the man who has SERVED this great nation of ours, my friend.

My friend…

And so, since it’s that time of year, it’s time for this little gem:

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.