Hot Fun in the Summertime

I have been trying to think of something to write about, but I am afraid I may have run (no pun intended) out of humorous things to say about running. Some of you are probably saying, “He ran out about six articles ago. It’s about time the old fool realized it.”

Perhaps the weather has something to do with it, since as it gets closer to summer, even though I continue to run, I lose my enthusiasm for it. And judging by the temperatures of the last three weeks, summer arrived in mid-May. I sort of feel inclined to write about running in the heat, but I know I did that last summer. On the other hand, no one probably read it anyway, except Cedric, and he has to, so why should I worry?

Therefore, I will start by avowing that while summer is a fun time for most everyone else, for runners it is somewhere between a four-month-long peer-influenced trial of perseverance and sportomasochism.

I even feel self-conscious at times when I run past a normal walking or stationary person. I feel they are thinking, “Look at that crazy jackass running in this heat. Look at him, will you? He’s completely soaked with sweat, his face is a mask of pain, and breathing like William Perry on the first day of training camp. He’s obviously expressing suicidal ideation through exercise.”

Which brings to mind a suggestion for a summer race, “The Death Wish 10k.” It would be held every year in late August at 1pm, at the Northwoods Mall parking lot. The course would circumscribe the mall and would probably necessitate rounding it about a half-dozen times. Participants would have to wear those air-tight, silvery looking sweatsuits you see advertised on TV and black woolen stretch socks. There would be salt water available at one mile splits and hot soup, chili and coffee at the finish. The age group winners would get a two week pass to the Parris Island Marine Boot Camp. The overall winners would receive free tickets to the Ill Will Games to be held in Libya next year.

Perhaps a way to prolong the racing season through the hot months would be to have some night races. We could begin with the “Spirit of Spoleto—Let’s Do Lunch 5k Invitational.” Qualifications: 1) Proff of attendance at the last five Spoleto events (Piccolo, being free, of course does not count); 2) A picture of yourself with a group of people at a Spoleto event, at least two of whom are of indiscernible gender. The race would be at 9pm in the downtown area. The participants will wear what one usually wears for Spoleto evening events—anything that can be defined by a fellow Spoletan as being “divine,” “superb,” or “fun.” Labels will be closely checked. Running shoes are optional.

The overall winners will get to “do lunch” with a major Spoleto artiste. Age group winners will receive Spoleto Patron, Zina (“Zee Nee”) Paolozzi-Rockefeller-Middleton’s tape—“Give me Spoleto or Give me Death.” The tape instructs aspiring Spoletans in such things as: 1) How to wear your glasses on the top of your head; 2) How to know when not to clap at a ballet, and 3) How to meet and appear to converse intelligently with artsy people, despite being artistically illiterate.

An evening race at the opposite end of the social spectrum would be a night version of the Cooper River Bridge Run, with the only other major difference being that the participants must run the race sans shorts, but strategically covered with luminous silver paint. It would be called the Great Moon River Run.

An interesting touch would be that there would be no prizes or trophies awarded. However, the warm-up shorts which would be taken up just prior to the race would only be given back to the overall and age group winners.

Maybe there is hope for hot weather running after all. Probably more than there is for my rapidly dwindling store of humorous ideas for this column. If any LCR readers have subjects or ideas for articles, please let me or Cedric know.

And yes, before I receive hundreds of queries, tail-gaiting at the “Great Moon River Race” will result in immediate disqualification.

(Originally published July 1986)

The Attack of the Free-Foodies

It always amazes and, at some level, disgusts me, that people become so culinarily orgasmic over free food. I’ve seen it in my workplace whenever a pharmaceutical rep. has a luncheon or just brings in containers of doughnuts, juice, and coffee, where formally, or better, formerly, educated people suddenly act like starving Darfurians. No, I retract that, I’m sure the Darfurians would maintain a semblance of dignity, even with the ubiquitous clouds of flies, whereas these over-stuffed greedy-guts might actually suck down a fly or two in the throes of their food frenzies.

I’m tempted, but always resist screaming at them, as they rip apart the defenseless pastries like lions at a Chihuahua convention: “Have you never seen a doughnut before? They’re quite commonplace, you know, in the worldwide menu of available sustenance. Do the names Krispy Kreme or Duncan make clanging sounds in your vacuous belfries?”

Also, at my workplace, where we are divided into teams housed in separate offices in the same building, a thoughtful person on my team will occasionally bring in some breakfast goodies, such as brownies, cupcakes, or the omnipresent doughnuts, which, if there were a contest to name a national pastry, would win in a sucroseslide. Naturally, whatever the sweet thing—it could be chocolate-covered liverbits—it is scoffed down piranha style in a matter of nanoseconds, but occasionally, when the donor is excessively generous, there are leftovers, and within minutes people from the other offices, who have apparently developed super efficient olfactory sensors, are in our office drooling over the calorie-laden remains. If one of us is in there, they will semi-politely ask, as their hands are three quarters of the way into the bag, “Okay if I have one?” If none of us is there, then they adhere to the pastry purloiner’s motto, “Don’t ask, just take.”

I’ve always wanted to put something like a miniature bear trap or a black mamba in the bag, though they’d probably eat the latter, mongoose-like, without bothering to look.

One day at work, they announced over the P.A. system, just before 12:00, that there would be a drug rep. sponsored luncheon in our break area, , and the noise of the people stampeding toward that destination would have caused someone from an earthquake prone area to have a panic attack.

Another place that seems to attract “Free-Foodies” in never-ending streams is the supermarket, when they are giving out samples of food products. Some of them, instead of taking a morsel and moving on, stake their claims to gormandizing rights there on that spot and only disengage their incisors when the harassed attendant is forced to explain that his job is to allow people to sample and hopefully buy the product, not to satisfy someone’s eternal pangs of hunger.

Lastly, a new venue for the “Free-Foodie” is a popular restaurant that often has a lot of customers waiting to be seated, patiently or otherwise, and this establishment, in a thoughtful marketing gesture, starts its wait staff walking amongst the throngs giving out free samples of their wares.

All of a sudden, it’s feeding time at the monkey exhibit, as ravenous patrons snatch items, such as chicken marsala and calamari and jam them into rapidly masticating mouths, excited further by the overwhelming thought—or, perhaps, it’s a reflex now—that may be they can put away an entire meal this way and it won’t cost a penny. Regarding the simian reference, I have wondered whether these same people in the restaurant’s restroom, could be easily startled into slinging excrement at one another.

Attending a two year old’s birthday recently may have shed some light on the etiology of this behavior, as I observed the birthday boy stuffing a large piece of cake into his already caked with cake mouth, being certain to extend his whole hand into the mini-cavern of his mouth to ensure he didn’t lose any of its delectable 1500 calories. May be some traumatic event fixated him at that moment of his life, such as, just prior to getting his piece of cake “and eating it too,” his father, seizing the opportunity to participate in any kind of “par-tee,” getting crap-faced and passing out, face-first, into the cake, much to the horror of family, friends, and, of course, the birthday boy. Hence, now that little boy, grown to adulthood, eats a piece of birthday cake—anybody’s—brownie, doughnut, luncheon spread, supermarket or restaurant sample as soon and as fast as possible, so he can avoid the recurrence of that long ago trauma or its memory.

I’m afraid I don’t have a psychological theory for the “Free-Foodie’s obsession with any food that is free. I think it may simply be that most people are just “Cheap-Ass Bastards.”

I will end this piece with this plea to the “Free-Foodies:” “Try to remember that unless you are truly starving, that the next time you are confronted with food being doled out gratis, behave yourselves. For God’s sake, sirs/madams, have you no decency. The whole world is watching. Especially the Darfurians.”