By Paul Gaszak, English Faculty
This week, I have a couple follow-up anecdotes to my two most recent posts. In a way, I feel like I’m pulling the sitcom cop out of having a clip show. But I’m not! This is NEW material. This isn’t like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air showing old clips of Carlton dancing – these are all new Carlton dances. So, let’s dance.
This past Sunday, team “Run RMU Run” ran the Shamrock Shuffle. The race itself was exciting and fun as it navigated runners around the Loop through spectator-lined streets. One of my favorite moments along the way was running down State Street past the Chicago Theatre. I took this photo on my iPhone without breaking stride. (What can we call taking photos while running? Options: 1. Flash & Dash 2. Joggin’ Photog. 3. Obnoxious.)
My other favorite moment was a guy standing on the side of the road around Mile 4 who was dressed like
Will Ferrell from the famous SNL cowbell skit. True to the skit, he had the shirt riding up his belly as he hammered away on a cowbell. What made it even funnier was that he was standing all by himself and he never broke character. It’s a good thing, because at that moment in the race I was tired, and the only cure was more cowbell.
Everyone on our team ran at their own pace, so we found each other after the race to share in a deserved sense of accomplishment. Everyone did really great and had good reason to be excited.
In my post last week, I said one of my goals was to beat my own personal best time for an 8k. I did that by 21 seconds with a time of 43:17. I finished 8,403 out of 33,266 runners, placing me around top 25% of all runners, which was my other goal. I was very pleased with both accomplishments…until about midday Monday when I began whining around the office about how I could have done better and then set my goal for next year at a time of 39:30. To run that fast, I’ll need a lot more cowbell.
My mom loves bargains. Mark something as discounted and she will buy it, regardless of its worth or necessity. Take, for instance, the bags full of discounted Easter candy she had on the kitchen counter when I visited on Monday. I mostly avoided diving headfirst into all of the sugary goodness, though I may have eaten some of the Starburst jellybeans she bought.
As I was preparing to leave, my mom looked through one bag filled with an assortment of giant chocolate Easter bunnies and asked me, “Do you want to take some of these home?”
“No, I don’t need that stuff in my house.”
“Then, how am I going to get rid of all of these?”
“You could have started by not buying dozens of giant chocolate bunnies!”
She then tried to persuade me to take some of the candy to work, but I said no because I could already feel the “Why did you bring junk food?” glares of my colleagues. (Of course, we always eat the candy when it’s the office…we just make sure to be angry about it first.)
Mom dropped the discussion after that, not because I had convinced her, but because she knows that I have no willpower when it comes to candy. I stop by my folks’ house enough, and those Starburst jellybeans can’t last forever (or, really, past Monday night, because I ate them all), so it’s only a matter of time until one of my visits involves me gnawing on the head of a stale chocolate bunny while wishing some Reese’s eggs had been available on discount instead.
The Flâneur's Turtle 