Make Me A Human Laugh Machine

Some day I might have a child. This goes in the face of what may, or may not, be a known truth about me: I am completely terrified of having (mostly raising) a child for a lot of reasons not worth going into now.

Actually, what I have openly said that “at this point in my life” I don’t want children and I can’t see a time when I might. And this point in my life has lasted a solid five years. I am just smart enough to know, however, that time changes things/people.

Lately the winds have been shifting on the baby front. Not a whole sea-change mind you. But as the missus and I settle in to married life, we want to shake out the last kinks we might not have gotten to over the last ten years.

And of course we waffle on this. I still contend that I think I would probably be pretty alright with never having children. While Katie is less certain. On other days Katie is pretty clear there will be no babies. These also happen to be the same days I more eagerly point out a little girl with particularly pretty ribbon in her hair, or a little crumb crusher with an ESPECIALLY over-sized back pack.

Her main claim, when arguing for breeding, is this, “But we would be such great parents!” Okay, everyone thinks this. Literally everyone. We are biologically programmed to believe it. Britney Spears has said it. Lohan’s parents. Everyone. This still remains the single worst reason to try to be a parent. Because you think you would be good at it.

I have a better reason. Kids are goddamn hilarious. It is like having a human laugh factory -- that you made -- set to entertain you 24 hours a day.

I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I have first hand experience of this hilarity on a daily (hourly?) basis. Slopers are notorious for going on rampages about carriages not being allowed in bars. BARS!

And the bar in question relented! Wild stuff.

This puts together a pretty nice combo for humor. Really god awful know-it-all parents being shown up by their own progeny, who also turn out to be pretty god awful know-it-alls themselves. Just, you know, cuter. A perfect recipe.

For instance, I was walking around the neighborhood recently and I saw a kid, maybe about five, horsing around on a parking meter. He was climbing on it. Swinging around it. Just basically fucking around. Looked like a decent time, too. If I was 150 lbs lighter it is the very thing I would do every single time my mom spoke with one of her boring friends and neglected me. Take an inanimate object and turn it into a play ground. The alternative is to just stand there and listen to them list their favorite flavors of yarn, or kombucha.

This kid continues his circus act until his mom, who apparently skipped her fresh-squeezed hypertension juice this morning, comes running over and scolds him, “Excuse me, Mister. But, what makes you think that this is a good idea?!?”

I really wanted to interject, “Excuse me. Ma’am? Sorry to interrupt. But I think it looks like a GREAT idea! I mean here is this really dumb object, not really doing anything. But your son sort of decided to use the limber athleticism he still has to turn it into a game to occupy himself. He didn’t go all Cool-Hand-Luke on the meter or anything. Just sort of passing the time. All without interrupting your soliloquy on why it is so important for him to go to $2,000 standardize test prep-classes every week.”

I obviously didn’t say that, or anything for that matter. Mostly because I was afraid of her. I marked the event as another reason not to have kids and moved on to with my Saturday chores.

The last stop on my route was the bank. While filling out a deposit slip I noticed a young lad next to me doing some careful writing on the back of an envelope. Why it was our spry gymnast from before! Seemed he had found a more tame activity, compliant with his mother’s strict mores. He was taking his time with his writing, too. Very intent on getting the penmanship just right. It was clear he wanted his message clearly understood.

He wrote, “I HATE YOU”. Just like that. In all caps.

He slowly walked over to his mom, and gave it to her. He placed it in her hand and smiled back at her.

She didn’t freak-out or anything. Just sort of sighed and said, “Well, that’s just great. Thank you.”

Strangely, this event made me want children more.

A walk in the park

Oh, fresh fallen snow.

As cold as you come, you still

warm our frigid hearts.

Epilogue

Epilogue

9:00am - The Day After

This is when I awoke. I had not slept past 6 or 6:30 am for the previous three months. All my other friends have slept very little and are wide awake by 5 am. Chipp? He got up and drove himself home to be with his wife. At 5am.

We mill about. But one by one my friends and family start peeling away. I have some breakfast with the crew. We trade stories. My wife leaves soon there after. In retrospect I stayed in town too long. The trappings, the celebration of yesterday, are gone. Like the circus -- the well oiled machine that it is -- ironman has come and gone. One more cliche that fits the mold.

By monday night the weekly sprint triathlon is in full swing and I can barely walk. Don’t these people have any respect for what I just did?

I did not deal with the week very well. I stayed with friends Amy and Greg in the house, and realized they probably would have liked a little alone time. I made the long drive back to manhattan, and when I got there no one was ready for a drink with me. The trumpets and ticker tape parade was on hold.

What I had done was pretty neat, but honestly it is far from remarkable. Almost 3,000 people had done the same thing. That very day. Hundreds of thousands will complete the event in a year. Even the let down I went going through was/is unremarkable. It happens to just about everybody who does this distance. But, for seven full months not one day went by when I didn’t think this event. I certainly did not think about our wedding this much, for this long. (For the record our wedding still ranks as a better day.) It was very hard to let go.

In the end I cam away with a few tremendous lessons from the event.

1. Patience and smiles go a really long way.

2. As important as you think you or the event is … it will end. And you are going to have to go to work, be social, clean house, pay bills, breath air down the road.

3. These are choices. We are some of the wealthiest, healthiest, luckiest people in the world. To even be able to make the choice to get across the line you are among the healthiest, safest, spoiled people on this planet. In history.

4. I’ll do it all again.

Run.

Run.

2:30 pm - To this point things have gone as near to perfect as things can go when you set out to workout for twelve plus hours. My memories of the day are clean, clear and picturesque. I am certain that there must have been some shining examples of human misery. But I saw very little of it. As such, my retelling of the day may come out more glossy than what actually took place.

However. I do remember the smell of the transition tent when moving from the bike to run. Mix sweat with urine with earth with farts with poo with suffering and you get the idea. Ironman markets a massive amount of gear and product. I do not intend to purchase the his and/or hers cologne set should it be made available.

If I had any hesitation in wanting to set out for the marathon, the overwhelming stench of the tent set me right.

2:40 pm - The first few steps of the marathon are down hill. I notice I have a slight pain in my right foot as I set out. One-thousand meters into the run it disappeared. Those thousand meters might have been the longest of the race.

2:50 pm – Chipp has come up on me and passed. He looks like he is doing better. That makes me feel good for him, but sad for me. I am already a little bit beyond my pace. I wish I could go with him, but I can ill afford to make such a stupid move so early in the day. I hang back and relax.

Of the core group I trained with I am now bringing up the rear. Yes, I noticed it. And counted it important enough to recount it in essay. So it would be a lie to say it didn’t bother me at all. But I learned enough humility from the people I love and respect to understand that I needed to let my friends go, keep a smile on my face and race with-in my means. It is a much smaller victory, for sure. But a victory. And one of which I still remain proud.

3:30 pm – We are out on the loneliest stretch of the race; for me at least. It is a stretch of country road that is an out and back and comprises most of the marathon. It is different than being on the bike. On a bike when there are spectators you can’t really interact with them. But here we are on foot and we could, if there was anyone with whom to interact, of course.

To me, running is a solitary activity. Often I have sought out small races in small places. But I even feel a sense of solitude in the largest marathons (40,000+) in crowded cities (D.C. and Philadelphia). It’s a lot like living in New York City to me. People all around you. All moving in the same direction. All going to the same place, ultimately. Some are on the sidelines to cheer you on. Others, well, they are sort of in your way and all you want to do is keep moving. Keep moving forward.

Out here on this road there is no one but us marathoners. There is tall grass. Running brooks. Countryside. It is lonely, but in a different way than it was for all my miles in Central Park. And it is every bit as wonderful.

4:15 pm – I am through ten miles. There is a photo that was taken of me in this range. I am smiling and there is surprise and joy on the face of my wife. I am starting to feel the fatigue of the day. But seeing my family and friends in town renews me. I like impressing them with my good humor. The way I am taking this on with joy, and continue to move forward with a grin.

5:00 pm – The turn around in the marathon goes by the house in which we are staying and right on past the finish line. Only fools who think too much of themselves – the sort of fools who would sign up for an iron distance event – would think the idea of passing by obvious points for stopping and being strong enough not to do just that is “neat”. I am one such fool.

5:05pm – There is something that has been going on all day that is, well, pretty awesome. Sure, sure, iron distance triathlon. Great. Whatever! I am currently a perfect 5-for-5 in “trashshots” that I have attempted.

The organization that runs ironman has some strict rules about where you can throw things out. You take on a lot of energy and fluids during the day. This produces a lot of garbage. Athletes are penalized for “abandonment”, or throwing away things in non-designated areas in order to keep the course clean. It’s a good rule.

To encourage folks to throw away their refuse within aid station areas the volunteers on the course have set up clearly designed targets for you to aim your throws – or as I am calling them trashshots.

I hit a card board cut out of a bear and a moose. I scored a goal in a hockey net with a half full bottle of water and on the run scored on regular jumpshot in a trash bin AND! -- the money shot for the day – an around the head, hook shot of a water bottle. Dead center.

Again, things were coming up Chapman.

6:15pm – I have moved through town. I don’t feel the worse I have ever felt, but I don’t feel the best, either. However, this is a day for perspective. For 16 miles into the marathon-leg of an iron distance triathlon … I feel pretty great. I finally let myself think about the finish line. Just not too much.

During training, to keep myself from ever thinking about what crossing the finish line might feel like, I would enforce stiff penalties for going there. I have a few tricks for enforcement. One way would be to sprint for the next two minutes, whether on bike, on foot or in the water. I would do this if I had any visions of the finish line. The other way would be to add up all the hours I had left to do train before I would be to race day – which anything more than a week out was near impossible task for a non math savant.

The danger in signing up, training for, or even watching the event on television is that it boils the day down to just a few moments. Yes. Those are special moments and should be remembered; but thinking about them too much has a funny way of tricking your mind into believing there isn’t still very hard work to do. And even here, with much more behind me than in front of me there is very hard work to do, indeed.

But I think of the line if only to calculate what I need to do to finish before sundown. It is the first time I put a concrete time goal into my head. It works out that if I run sub fourteen minute miles from this point forward I can make it. I am confident I can do this with ease, but again have enough respect to know that things could still go wrong.

I am pulling consistent 10 – 11 minute miles. Every time I go below 14 minutes I take the difference and put it in a bank, ready to be spent if needed.

Through to mile nineteen I have about eight minutes to spare to make my new goal. On another day I might have pushed through it. I have felt worse in marathons and certainly pushed through, but I still don’t know the event and how my body will react well enough to take any chances. For the first time I decide to walk and pull everything together. I have family I want to be smiling for in about three miles. That, more than five or ten minutes saved on the day, is my goal.

7:15pm – The home stretch. I have pulled myself off the back road and am making the final ascent into town. I remain steadfast in my commitment to run all hills. I am gaining on town center and see my wife. She is nearly tearful. “Get into that arena.” I bark at her playfully. My wife is routinely late for things. I have learned to abide it as this is not a fault of her character. It is fault of my character that my lack of patience allows me to get so annoyed so quickly. Yet, if she is late in this instance it would probably be a reasonable time to be disappointed with her. I half kid when I say it again.

I am down around the final turn around and I have one mile to go.

I am aware that I have chosen everything on this path, nothing was forced upon me. And yet it took an enormous amount of self sacrifice to make this moment happen. The sun is still out, and I am proud to have beaten it to the finish line. It looks remarkable over mirror lake.

People in town are going bananas. Still. They have been going bananas for 12 plus hours. They will continue to go bananas until the last sorry soul crosses the finish line. In the ten seconds I am in their life I am happy to absorb all the energy they have to give.

I enter the Olympic park and it is useless to fight back some small tears. A competitor has decided it is his time to sprint. We are not close to breaking one of the important hour marks. At all the hour marks, be it 10, 11, 12, 13 there is a crazy roar from the crowd to encourage competitors to make that arbitrary, but mentally important, goal. This is somewhat poor form on his part. But I let it pass. He’s got the legs to sprint. He’s not going to ruin my moment, and I decide to let him have his.

I focus on the finish. I hear Shaun Chapman, from Brooklyn, NY … and I am so overwhelmed I miss the rest. But that’s ok. I don’t need anyone to tell me what I already know.

I am an ironman.