Roadrunner III

She texts me on Thursday:

Her: "Do you have to work tomorrow? Oh this is ::roadrunner:: by the way"
Me: I think that I deleted this message, but I said something about not being sure that my mom's car would make it on Saturday (I obviously didn't read that her message was asking about Friday)
Her: "Well I was going to see if you wanted to run with me on Friday instead"
Me: "You're killing me, lol, i have to work on friday. Unless you run at night?"
Her: "Ha ha sure how late?"
Me: "Well, i will get out of work probably around 3 or 3:30 and then i might take a nap, lol. 5 or 6 too late?"
Her: "How about 5. Is that okay?"
Me: "Yeah, I'll shoot for that. How far are we running? I hope you're okay with running like really slow, lol."
Her: "oh please i don't care how fast we run it won't bother me at all. We can go 3 or 5 or 9. You pick"
Me: "Five sounds about right."
Her: "Okie dokie sounds good. I am so excited! Oh do you want to run out here or by your house?"
Me: "Your area. There isn't much good running around here. Or i'm just bored with it, who knows?"
Her: "Okay can i call and give you directions tomorrow?"
Me: "Yeah, totally. Anyways, i have to wake up to open the shop, so i'm off to bed now. Sleep well."
Her: "Whoops sorry see ya tom."

And so then Friday I wake up and get to work, blah blah, fine. I get off at like noon ish, and then at 2 I have to go to this lame coffee class thing that lasts until about 3 or 3:20. After that Duffy, Scary Eye, and I go to Hottie to look at the clothes. They mostly suck, but they had a few things that weren't too bad. Anyways, I leave, get home, eat, turn right back around and head out to meet Roadrunner. By the time I get there, I'm about ready to piss my pants. I don't know WHY, I just really needed to pee. We actually met in the parking lot of a church a few miles from her place, and ran in that neighborhood, so I just slipped into the church and used their bathroom.

We head out and I can tell immediately that it's going to be an embarrassing night for me. I've only run like once since the half, and I can feel that my legs are just not there for me. We get about a mile and I stop to retie my shoes (my new pair). After that, there is a pretty harsh hill that I end up having to walk the second half of. She does this hill routinely, but she never complains about the pace, even when we start walking. I keep up the interest by pointing out various plants on the side of the street and mentioning their medicinal possibilities when applicable. Everything is actually going pretty well at this point, even though I'm totally holding her back. We get to a certain point, and she says,

"If we go left, it'll be 5 miles total. If we go right, it'll be 3. What do you want to do?"

Now, I hesitate to voice my real choice (3, duh), because I don't want to appear to be such a damn baby. But at the same time, I'll probably look even more stupid if I try to do 5 and end up hurting hard. So I end up standing there for a minute, deliberating. She chimes in,

"I honestly don't care if you want to just do 3. That's fine with me."

"Alright, then let's just do 3."

So we turn right and start running downhill. We run fairly solid for the rest of the time back, making only one short walk break. Now here's the analysis.

She is super super nice. Incredibly encouraging. The mother in movies that died during the main character's childhood but remains a solid memory and vision of support. At the end of the hill, she is all "Good job! You did great!" And when we finished, it was more of the same. It's nice being around someone so pleasant. It's like being hugged, sort of. Warm and fuzzy. Care bears. Rainbows. Gay things. Smiles.

She is sort of out of touch with her generation. When I asked her what she usually listens to on her ipod when she runs, she said "Oh, uh, Journey. Ya know, like Hootie and the Blowfish...." and when I asked if there was anything from within the past 10 years, she couldn't think of anything other than Jack Johnson, "who you can't really run to."

She dressed like how my mom would probably dress if she were going out to run. That was sort of endearing, though. We laughed about fashion, and about our lack of it over the years (wearing sweat pants to class, for example). She has an amazing smile framed by dimples like a gold-leaf filigree frame around some John Currin painting. She had braces once. She wants to be a dental hygienist. She has such fantastic teeth.

Anyways, I'm going to see what I can do about seeing more of her. I texted her something about like "I had fun, giggle giggle, we should do it again, teehee," or something. I'll update as necessary.



Ann-Charlotte by John Currin, 1996