HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
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HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
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Monday, January 30, 2006Baby, It's Cold Outside
Yes, there's nothing like doing something really fucking retarded to make you feel grrrreat about yourself.
I had a decent day today. Didn't have to go to work, per se, because I had a workshop for theater teachers to attend. Normally, I realize, a day of "professional development" is enough to make a person want to chew their own arm off to get away, but these workshops aren't too bad. They're basically akin to being in a beginning acting class with a bunch of non-majors. I'm always reminded pleasantly of my early college years, just without the pot and the man-perm. So, that was nice. I came home to my wife, who suggested that we go for a run. We've been neglecting this part of our routine lately and we were horrified on Saturday to discover exactly how quick one can become utterly and completely deconditioned. We walked out the door with our usual departure routine. I held the door open for her and she said, "Do you have your keys?" I patted the lump in my running shorts (not that one, you pervs) and answered in the affirmative. We headed down to the park and had a lovely run, our spirits buoyed by the fact that we seemed somewhat less absolutely out of shape than two days prior. As the sun set on Columbus Circle, we stepped into the warm embrace of the subway system and headed home to walk our dogs, who hadn't been out since 11:30 or thereabouts and were probably quite near to doing a Jackson Pollack on the rug. We got out at our stop and held each other, shivering, from the station to our front door, which is where I discovered the hole in my pocket that had left us keyless. Now I have no fucking idea how a heavy clump of rubber-banded keys managed to leave my person without my being aware. They're fairly heavy when they're lashed together like that. And I'm not such a serious runner that I enter any kind of ecstatic, endorphine-infused zen mindset that carries my spirit to nirvana while my body exerts itself. Mostly, I'm panting and making sure I don't step in dogshit, so I should have caught this. But I didn't. And so my wife and I were stuck outside in the rapidly cooling January air in shorts and running shirts, without phones and with about thirteen dollars to our names. Our friends upstairs from us, alas, were not home. Our landlord was elsewhere. So we shivered our way back to the subway and went to Starbucks, where we could use the bathroom and not fall into hypothermia. This is yet another example of a time when modern technology just fucks you. We have nobody's phone number memorized. We store our friends' numbers in our cell phones like all citizens of the twenty-first century. So we couldn't just call someone. We spent what seemed like a decent amount of time sipping overpriced coffee and staring dully at the people on their laptops and then we took a chance and headed back uptown, where we repeated our frozen trek from the station to our doorstep. This time, Isis be praised, one of our friends upstairs was home and proved what a good idea it is to have a spare key in the hands of someone trustworthy. We chipped the icicles off of our nipples and jumped into a hot shower. And this is why I'm never going running again.
Comments:
Not having to carry keys is one of the things I take for granted living in suburban Ohio. I've left the doors unlocked (to avoid carrying keys) for thousands of runs over the years and have had only a couple of occasions to think twice about it.
One time, Marcia left the house while I was gone on a winter run. She reflexively locked the door when she left. I came home to a state of locked-outishness. I smiled and nodded, knowing that my preparation had finally paid off. You see, in the event that I were to ever be locked out, I had, years earlier, left a second floor window unlocked for myself. "Won't be a problem," I remember thinking to myself that summer day when I was still in my mid-twenties. "After all, I'm an excellent climber." It turned out to be simple! All I had to do was haul my 30-something year-old ass up onto the snow-covered roof, scale the steep icy grade without falling to my death, unstick the frozen-shut (but still unlocked!)window, remove nearly all of my clothes to fit through the opening, and squeeze my now-larger body through a window the size of a laptop screen. I don't think I've ever mentioned that incident to Marcia, but it did motivate me to get a spare key made that I hid somewhere a few years ago and haven't used since. I wonder if it's still there?
# posted by
 : 4:46 PM
Fantastic post!
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It's truly a shame that our dinky brains cannot be bothered to store phone numbers anymore and we rely instead of cellular phones. In an emergency, like yours, we're fucked. But it makes for good readin'.
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