Nov
25
Wrong Number
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 2 Comments
Apparently, it is very easy to mistake my cell phone number for someone else’s. This has happened to me on multiple occasions. Here’s the most recent one:
“Call me when you can. Can Jake go to my sister’s house tonight with Brian and us? Call me. -Nanc”
I don’t know anybody named Jake or Nanc; I don’t even know anybody named Brian. Of course, this is not the oddest text message I’ve ever received. My favorite misdirected text has to be the following:
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
That’s it. That was the whole message. What was the person thinking about me? Were they thinking, I can’t stop thinking how good looking you are? Maybe they were thinking, I can’t stop thinking how much I’d like to kill you? Was the person threatening me or professing their love? I guess I’ll never know. Plus, it’s kind of hard to explain to your wife.
Nov
1
In college I played club lacrosse and we had this saying, Turf Sniper. We said this whenever someone tripped for no apparent reason. Running down the field, nobody around, all of a sudden you’re laying face first in the grass, Turf Sniper. Taking a shot on goal, trip on your own feet, Turf Sniper. I bring this up because I thought the close of my lacrosse days signaled the end of the Turf Sniper. And I suppose it did, but he didn’t go away completely, he just changed his name. Now he’s the Asphalt Sniper.
In my last post I talked about running. What I didn’t mention was that at the end of September I ran my first Half Marathon; 13.1 miles through Jersey City and Liberty State Park. It was a great day and a terrible day all at the same time. My training had gone well and I felt pretty good before the race started. Unfortunately, it was 80 degrees and 90% humidity. The one saving grace was that it was overcast. But perhaps the worst thing that happened that day was that my old friend the Turf Sniper finally made a reappearance. In the slightly more than a year that I’ve been running, I’ve fallen twice, both times during the Newport Liberty Half Marathon. That damn Asphalt Sniper tagged me twice.
About a half mile from the start, surrounded by about 200 people, I ate it…hard. This wasn’t one of your little rinky dink falls. No, this was a limbs flailing, feet going over your head tumble. I distinctly remember having one thought while my view cartwheeled between sky and pavement: Get up! And so, when I finally came to rest, I popped back up and immediately started running again. If I hadn’t, I would never have finished the race, I would’ve been done right there, at the .5 mile mark. I turned to my running partner, we were still running together at that point in the race so she got to see my fall, and said, “It’ll give me something to focus on later.”
I am a prophet. 3 miles later, when I stumbled again (this time not nearly as spectacularly), it didn’t feel like that big a deal. I trotted over to the side of the course, retied my shoes, and started running again. Then, from mile 4 to mile 9, when I thought I might throw up with every step, I just focused on the pieces of gravel embedded in my right palm and the back of my head. And then a strange thing happened at mile 9: I realized not only that I was going to make it, but that I might reach the finish under my target time of 2 hours.
That elated feeling was crushed 2 miles later when some jackass threw a half mile hill in the course at mile 11. But then, finally, the end was in sight. With a quarter mile to go, I looked at my watch and saw that I had only a couple of minutes left. I started kicking and crossed the line with 29 seconds to spare. I don’t think I could’ve gotten through that middle part of the race, those 5 gruelling miles when the humidity really peaked and the blisters on my feet started making themselves known, had I not fallen so early in the race. After that, everything else seemed kind of trivial, and for that I have the Asphalt Sniper to thank. So, here’s to you, Asphalt Sniper.