Roads, Mills, Laps

I had too much in my head yesterday; I was too mad at all the ridiculous injustices of a world gone completely stupid, completely fearful of unmasked confrontation, a world populated by village idiots shuffling about cyberspace with their colon full of cheesy superlatives, squeezing them out everywhere from their loose anuses like bran flake turd logs; they are afraid to offend but not afraid to shit love and peace and tolerance at the drop of a grossly mismanaged contest. I then got lost in an hour’s worth of dander, stewing on all that wasted time that I spent trying to nail the mood and set the tone, trying to entice a panel of what I expected would be comprised of unbiased (HA FUCKING HA) ‘reasoning’ and ‘logical’ judges to select me. Then I thought about more waste–all that wasted fossil fuel spent shuttling a world’s full of blowhards about, hither and yon, and all those wasted tax dollars spent educating them and indoctrinating them in how to hurl the word ‘hate’ about when disagreement and disappointment raise their ugly, offending heads, when logic arrives, when reasoned argument begins.

‘Playa hatas’ just can’t seem to share their toys in this cyberkindergarten sandbox that we all sit in; they don’t belong in this modern, convivial world, where happiness and jazz hands mean acceptance of idiocy and Carollian lunacy. ‘Playa Hatas’ don’t give two shits about the prospects of subsequent contests or follow-on underage dates at the after party; they burn bridges when they are constructed out of worthless paper: wasted essays that served no purpose other than starting the email campaign and turning on the oven that will baked the cookies that helped elect a saint.

And so I ran too hard because of all this. I moved my feet carelessly. I shouldn’t have been running; my world had become like Dresden after Bomber Harris’ Bacchanalian victory party, by the time the jolly bombadiers where toasting and the children down below were roasting.

It finally caught up with me; it was there at the turn waiting for me: feet meet karma.
I had just made my way back home. I was at mile 6 on a turn and my ankle gave out underneath me. I didn’t roll it on a stick; I didn’t step in a pothole. It just gave out and I fell down. Boom: The Karma police have now entered, stage left. That’s how it happened–no drama, karma.

I stood up and felt my ankle bone ball thing. The whole foot swelled up and pain crackled its way up my leg. I couldn’t take a step and so I sat down on a low stone wall and contemplated things. I contemplated dandelions and blue skies, ants on the ground and swans on a lake. I dwelled on how lucky I had been all these years running and how particularly angry I was today. I thought about karma and evil spirits. I then contemplated walking home because I am too stubborn. “Five miles ain’t that bad,” I thought. I could make it and be a hero, living to tell the tale and blog all Reznor-like, all angryman, all ’see I really can be a caveman’-like. I walked ten steps and it was ten too many: I thought I broke my ankle. I sat further down on the wall and looked down at the ants again.

About that point in time, a man got out of his truck and walked over to me. His name was Jose Ramos and he barely spoke any English. He told me–using hands more than words–that he and his landscaping workers saw me fall as they were sitting in their truck eating their lunch. He told me that they would take me wherever I needed to go–wherever, anywhere. I thanked him and hobbled over to the truck, opening up its rear door. I slid in beside three illegal immigrant landscapers in the middle of their lunch; their hands were caked with the soil of a hundred McMansions. They wolfed down their sandwiches and slurped their cartons of chocolate milk. These are the guys who stand outside Home Depot looking for work so that they can feed their families; these are the guys who accidentally chop off digits or fall out of trees on their heads and keep on working so that they can make $20 to buy a bunch of nothing from the dollar store for their kids.

They were filthy.

They drove me back to my work. I got out and shook their hands. I said a few words of thanks in my broken Spanish and found out where they work and who their supervisor is. Good Samaritans deserve more than a handshake, so I’ll write a letter. Everyone likes a good letter. They waved to me as they drove off to go back to wiping some rich lucky man’s ass. Who’s the lucky fucker now? As I walked away from truck and waved back at them, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs at the white world of land barons and Tollbrothaz homeowners–those who ignore these shadowy, hard-working saints. I wanted to take Rush Limbaugh’s fat smug face and smear it in all over these guys’ filthy jeans with my hand on his cranium pushing him into it all, letting him take in the smell of vintage 2006 indentured slave labor, resulting from being born unlucky and living in straight-up fear 24/7. I wanted him to suck on the grit underneath their fingernails.

I drove myself to the ER and was placed in a wheelchair. I kept standing up and the nurse kept pushing me down–making it all look like a sorry wackamole game played out inside a urine-smelling hospital. I felt like a pathetic louse getting wheeled everywhere; I felt helpless. I didn’t want to be there.

While I waited for an x-ray in my littleman’s chair, I noticed an old man who shuffled in with his aged wife. He grasped a walker and wore a bathrobe, its unfastened ties dangled at the side of his blue pajama pants; his glasses hung precariously on the bridge of his nose; his arms were all liver spots and faded freckles, coming together and forming big, brown planetary structures of aged pigment, symbolizing his star’s, his universe’s demise. His mouth quivered: he didn’t give a shit. His wife rubbed his back as he told the nurse that he had an infection from his catheter. He was in pain but tried to hold it back. He followed the nurse into a room. As she closed the door, she handed a clipboard to the man’s wife with a pile of papers to sign. The old wife patted the old man one last time and reached for the papers before the door closed.

What a damn shame: You are a child; you dance and play; then you grow up and study and fuck; you get married and worry, and then, eventually, you get to be 90 and your end comes as you get forced to stumble your way into a little room where a nurse tugs at a mass of pus that was once your phallic sword, your feel-good oat-sowing machine. You get to do it all in dirty pajamas, in front of an audience of contemplative 34-year olds sitting in their little chair grabbing their little ankle, thinking about their little angry blog while it all unfolds.

I was wheeled into an x-ray room and placed up on a cold metal slab.

I waited a few minutes and, since I have no attention span and hate to waste time, I decided to read the papers that I was handed when I signed in. I was told on page three that the hospital has the right to contact a coroner and request my autopsy. I continued to wait there on my slab, looking at my dirty, fugly, misshapen running toes pointing up, envisioning a toe tag dangling off of my first little piggy that went to the market. Mozart played over the speakers; I closed my eyes expecting the mortician at any moment.

A technician arrived; pictures were taken; nurses were summoned; Mozart sill played from the ceiling, coming out from those circular speakers with all the little pin holes. Wackamole unfolded as I was wheeled into another room where I was told by a disinterested P.A. who frequently looked at his watch that I had luckily had no break, rather a ‘high’ grade 2 sprain. He shook his head and wrote fast, telling me that he was sorry that I couldn’t train for my first marathon. He said I was still young and I should be able to get a BQ next year. I just nodded my head and let him push me down the conveyor belt, letting him assume me away into the 10th corral of the Jason Caity-Anna Graham Marathon with my foam finger and my cowboy hat. He looked up at me, smiled, and shook my hand.

Then he left.

Another nurse came in–a male this time. (Male nurses are the worst and will always remind me of Ben Stiller’s character in Meet the Parents.) He gave me a class on crutch walking. He made me demonstrate proficiency and then handed me my diploma: my discharge papers. I hobbled out of the emergency room and drove home with crutches thrown into the bed of my pickup truck.

Suffice it to say, I won’t be running for a while.

———————-
This is all goodness; all bountiful blessings. I consider this cankle thing my ‘million dollar wound.’ I’m getting sent home with a purple badge of stupidity. I get to eat all the pancakes I want now. I can get fat eating unlimited handfuls of candied orange slices and can chasingkimbia them with all the Dutch beer that my liver can process.
I can let myself really go for once.

I’m looking forward to writing about the experience.