So….here’s the recent order of events: Go to the doctor after work to find out what the weird groinal popups are….find out they’re my new hernia that I got earlier in the day loading a heavy box into the back of the Jeep…then…the following Saturday, in the early stages of my injury, buy some books about trail running at the used book sale/store.
That’s what I call “wishful”.
Now, I’m waiting to find out when I can have surgery to fix the bulge and things can get back to normal.
And, when I’m waiting for things to get back to normal, I can read about running.
That should be a motivator.
Does anybody talk about being an “armchair runner”?
That’s what I’ll be….for a while.
Here’s a video made 2 weeks before the beginning of the quarantine.
I had a book when I was younger called “Winners Never Quit”.
Published in 1970, it was a book about different athletes who persevered over an assortment of obstacles and succeeded in their various sports.
It made a big impression on me.
I’d run….throw….tackle…and think, even if my results weren’t “world-class”…even for an 11-year-old…that “winners never quit”…and I’d persevere.
I’d keep working at playing.
I’d turn it up a notch…and play harder.
I was a “winner”…just like all the guys in the book.
(“Guys in the book…”? I just realized that this book was only about the guys in the book! I guess that Phil Pepe wrote it for guys….but these days we’d have persevering men and women in a book like this. Women do persevere, too…right? But…I digress.)
Where was I?
Oh, yeah…winners never quit.
That being said…what’s going on with the world these days?
Anything interesting or strange?
Who’s a winner? Who’s a loser? Who can trust anything or anyone when everything is questioned and distrusted?
Do the math!
Dig deep!
Ferret out the people who’d steal and lie and cheat to achieve their goal…and then remove them from your path!
Don’t let anyone set your destiny on an alternate and less satisfying path!
Not even if it’s 78 million “anyones”.
The world is a cool place.
The world is a kooky place.
Winners Never Quit was written in the days before steroid scandals and all the other kinds of cheating we often see today in sports. It was written when we could still be sincere and trusting and we lacked our now strong ability to always expect the ironic or sarcastic punchline. Why, back in the day, they’d take away your Olympic medals if you’d played semi-pro baseball (Jim Thorpe) and a hero was a hero was a hero. We didn’t know any better. We didn’t have the information. We didn’t have the internet. We could take most things at face value.
Now, we can’t know what face value means anymore.
(My oldest son used to say “I can’t know” when he was little. Pretty funny…)
It’s a skill to spread distrust and confusion.
It’s by design that things are shaken and constantly in flux.
We still want to buy the snake oil if the salesman has a good rap.
Who can figure out how to find something amazing in their life….every day?
That’s tough.
No one can do that.
It’s impossible.
So, that being said, I think I’ll continue my trend of “not looking” and just settle back into accepting that not much happens in the world that’s very interesting.
Nah.
I’m kidding.
There’s plenty of amazing things that happen….amazing places…amazing people.
Lots of amazing things.
I’m not always good at finding them all….but I could be the best at looking for them.
Maybe I could be the very best at trying to be amazed by the people and things around me?
That would be a good skill to develop and sustain.
And…maybe I need to find the amazement in the common and under-appreciated? Be graciously full of gratitude every day? Be the guy who says “Man….that’s nice!” instead of the guy who wonders “I wonder why they did that?”.
I don’t know if an amazing thing will happen today.
On Monday of the second officially notified week of the beginning of the PANDEMIC®, one of my customers sneezed me full in the face.
I handed her the package she’d ordered from Amazon, and, when her hands were full of mail and she couldn’t cover her mouth, she thanked me for my efforts by ejecting one of the moistest sneezes I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing….full on….in my face.
Bloooooooooooooosh.
Sneeze juice all over me.
Gack.
I wiped my face off and said “see you later” and drove on.
What else could I do?
This was when any contact with another person could be a killer.
This was before we were used to the slow and steady undercurrent of dread we are accustomed to now.
This was before we’d licked coronavirus.
“Licked” is the wrong word, probably.
Getting sneezed on in a PANDEMIC® is spooky.
And then there was this Trump thing.
That’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax.
That would have been entertaining if it wasn’t so crazy and dangerous.
So….I had the PANDEMIC® to worry about….and I had to worry about talking about politics with people who were sure that the PANDEMIC® was a hoax designed to take down their CHOSEN ONE.
(Some parts of politics are freaking weird.)
That’s a lot of worries.
Then….I could worry about money…but…that had nothing to do with the PANDEMIC®.
(Well, it sort of did….but the Post Office made/let us all work through the darkest days of the Covid 19 thing, so the money part of it all never changed. We’d have the money….we just wondered if we’d live to spend it…)
I’m not supposed to talk about politics, anyway.
I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut and nod…just listen to the theories and alternate truth…let it all wash over me and then offer them a piece of chocolate from the Gump box.
Oh! I almost forgot! This past Monday, I got a double hernia at work!
(That’s true….but it sure is a good segue away from a dangerous zone…the POLITICS ZONE™.)
The doctor said I wasn’t supposed to lift anything heavier than 20 lbs.
How is that going to work?
I’ve got to roll that big rock up the hill and let it fall back down on me…over and over… before I finish.
Day after day, I have to roll that rock.
That burden is a lot heavier than 20 lbs.
What am I going to do?
The doctor said I need surgery.
I’ll get the surgery and keep on rolling the stone.
That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t mind being somewhere else.
I’d like to be in Idaho.
There’s no reason I couldn’t be in Idaho.
But…I love where I am.
I have no reason to believe that I couldn’t say that if I was somewhere different.
I could love “where I am”…even if I was somewhere other than “where I am”.
I see a bunch of deer running through the woods when I round a mountain corner out on the mail route…and realize that they don’t have a clue about Covid or strange pandemics.
They don’t know about painful things to worry about.
They don’t worry about “the end”…until the end comes.
They just run.
I need to start running again.
It soothes my soul.
It frees my mind.
Running is good.
If I could foster any skill…if I could sustain any ability…it would be to continue to be able to “love where I am”.
That’s not situational….it’s potentially innate.
All this “covid stuff” is insane.
I listen to the news all day when I’m not listening to reggae music…and it’s mostly bad news.
It’s the “news du jour”…it’s the story of the year…it’s survival.
It’s survival…and it’s depressing…and it’s something that someday will pass.
I love where I am.
Be….Here…Now.
And….I….Am.
Photo by By Eric Rolph at English Wikipedia – English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2406447
Even with my expensive trifocal lenses, that’s something I can’t do.
I can’t see these things.
I am wary of the things I think might be there….somewhere inside…the things that might hurt me.
I watch and wonder when the hammer is going to fall.
I wait for the germ or an unexpected cruelty to take me down.
Nah!
I’m just fooling around.
I don’t have such a negative world view.
People are usually good…usually nice.
I like people.
But…this Covid-19 stuff is pretty crazy.
Homemade protection is what we need.
Jenny went to the store yesterday and told me that she’d seen a bunch of old people walking around in Playtex gloves and red bandanas….probably a raincoat or two….other weirdnesses…homemade hazmat suits.
That’s the best we can do…homemade protection.
Voodoo magic to keep the bad juju away.
I deliver mail but don’t want to touch or be touched by any of the people I see out in the world.
I don’t want to catch a germ.
If we don’t separate with our normal habits…our cellphones and distractions…well…this germ is going to finish the job and really keep us all apart.
The three-piece band from Michigan…playing live in front of a stadium fuller than when the Beatles played there in 1965.
Live.
Three-piece band.
Live.
Man, they were a great band.
I thought that I didn’t really listen to Grand Funk all that much…until I remembered all the hits they had when I was growing up…”American Band”….”The Loco-Motion”….this song, “I’m Your Captain”…”Some Kind of Wonderful”….”Bad Time”….and probably a number of others that I can’t remember….
There were a bunch of songs that I heard all the time….so…I did listen to Grand Funk.
It’s easy to forget a band when they’ve been gone for a while….but…especially in this age of autotune and elaborate stage sets and pre-recorded tracks and all the other distractions that pass for “music”…a three-piece band that can do this is impressive.
These guys at the concert look like they were having fun, too.
That was a fun time to be getting into music, for sure….
