I'm Not Invisible -- Part 3

A few years ago, Kroger opened up a big new superstore in Alvin. One of the innovations was a self-checkout system, where people can run their own items over the scanner and get out faster than they can if they're in the so-called "Express Lane," which in my experience is unquestionably the slowest-moving lane in the store. It's the one where the woman in front of you has only two items, which make you think you're going to be out of there in a jiffy if you get behind her, but it turns out that she wants to pay in pennies that she keeps knotted up in a handkerchief. With knots that she can't untie. And neither can the checker. And when you offer the Alexander the Great solution with your pocketknife, the woman looks at you as if you wanted to kill one or two of her cats, of which you're convinced she has several dozen at home.

You know the line I mean.

But I digress. I was there using the self-checkout, which isn't as easy as it appears because if you have vegetables, there's no barcode on them. You have to look them up and then let the machine weigh them if they're sold by the pound. If they aren't, you have to punch in the number of them that you have.

Anyway, things were going pretty smoothly, so I wondered when the woman at the next station was staring at me. I hadn't made any blunders that I was aware of. I hadn't set off any alarms. I wasn't trying to sneak out without scanning the bread or the milk.

I ignored her and finished up my little transaction. I tore off the receipt and picked up my bags. As I was leaving, the woman said, "Don't I know you?"

I'm unfailingly polite, so I said, "I don't know. Do you?"

She looked at me again. "Do you run down Hill Street every day?"

"Yes," I said, "I do."

She smiled. "I thought so. I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on."

This last comment got a great reaction from the other customers. I'm just glad that Judy wasn't there to hear it.

I'm Not Invisible -- Part 2

Back in the early '90s Judy needed some pretty scary surgery. We had to go to St. Luke's hospital in Houston to fill out the admittance papers, along with those scary forms you have to give them. You know the ones.

We located the hospital and found the office we needed. It was a busy place. While Judy talked to someone at a desk about the forms, I sat down to wait. I had a book with me, so I read a little, but I was too nervous to concentrate. So I closed the book and looked around. I noticed that down at the other end of the waiting room there was a guy who was really giving me the eye.

That wouldn't have bothered me if the guy had been someone like Mr. Peepers. However, he looked a lot less like Wally Cox and a lot more like Dog the Bounty Hunter. And he used the same fashion consultant.

I turned to see if there was anybody near me he could be looking at, but there wasn't anybody sitting on either side of me. I opened my book again and hoped I was imagining things.

Surely he couldn't be looking at me. I mean I don't hang out with guys who can change tires with their teeth.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guy get up. He started in my direction, but he stopped near a table, picked up a magazine, and sat down. When he opened the magazine, I could see that he was looking at me over the top of it.

Judy was still filling out forms, clearly oblivious to what was going on. It was cool in the room, but I was sweating.

The guy got up again and came over to me. I looked up at him. I don't know how tall Dog the Bounty Hunter is, but this guy was around seven feet. Okay, maybe not, but that's how he looked at that moment.

"Hey," he said. He had a voice like Jesse Ventura's.

"Hi," I said. Or something like that.

"I think I've seen you before," he said.

"Uh," I said.

"Aren't you the guy who jogs past Alvin High School in the afternoons?"

"Uh, maybe."

"I see you nearly every day when I come in from work."

He sat down and we talked a while. He was a pretty nice guy. I never asked him what he was there for. I hope it wasn't for anything like Judy needed to have done.

I'm not Invisible

When I'm out pounding the pavement, I rarely think about who might be passing me in a car. Even if I did think about it, I usually can't see who's behind the wheel. For one thing, I have poor vision. And for another, windshields these days tend to be pretty dark and do a good job of whoever's driving the car.

The drivers can see me, but I never think about that, either, until somebody mentions it.

A couple of days ago, I was in the post office. I handed the postal clerk the package I wanted to mail, and she said, "Do you run every day?" It turned out that she drives to work every morning about the time I'm sweating it out on the streets of Alvin, and she sees me all the time. I told her that I run six days a week if I can, and her next question was the same one everybody else asks. "How far do you run?"

I used to be able to answer that one, but not anymore. There was a time when I ran eight minute miles. Those days are long gone. Now I have no idea how fast I run. I don't want to know. Maybe I'm in denial. At any rate, I used to run five miles. Now I just run for forty minutes. Maybe I'm going only three miles now, but if I am, don't tell me. As I said, I don't want to know.

So I told her that I didn't count the miles, just the minutes. She thought that was a good idea because she does the same thing. Every morning she gets up, has her coffee, and walks three minutes on the treadmill. Every little bit helps.

Weather Report

This morning it was 22° when I frolicked out the door to run. You folks who live Up North, and those of you who dwell on the plains and the mountains, might regard this as a mild and temperate spring day, but those of us who live a little closer to the bottom of the U. S. map think of it as (to use a technical term) mighty damn cold.

Even at that, however, it was better than yesterday when it was 29°. That's because yesterday it was overcast and a 10-20 mph wind was blowing down from the North Pole. Today, the sun was shining and there was only a light breeze. I could probably have worn my shorts, but I went with the longies instead. Well, I had the shorts on over the longies, if you want to get picky about it.

Not a bad run at all, and in fact I was sweating by the time I got home. I'd rather run on a day like this any time than to run during a Gulf Coast summer.

Days Like This . . .

. . . can fool you. The forecast high for Houston is 96, and the humidity will be brutal, too. But when you go outside at 7:30 A. M., you think, "Hey, this isn't too bad." You can feel a little bit of seabreeze drifting up from the south, and you're standing in the shade, and you think, "I can do this."

So you start to run. You can even kid yourself along for the first half mile or so. You stick to the shade, you don't try to break the four-minute mile, you think cool thoughts.

But then you start to sweat. After which you start to sweat a lot. Pretty soon, your socks weigh as much as your shoes did when you started out, but not as much as your shoes do now. They're soaked, and they're as heavy as concrete blocks.

Before long, you start thinking about how good some cold water would taste, how good a cold shower would feel. When you look at your watch, you see you're not even halfway done.

You sweat some more. When you swing your arms, drops of sweat fly off your fingertips. If you weren't wearing a headband, your eyes would be stinging with sweat. A little bit gets in them even as it is.

Eventually you get home. You don't even bother to go inside. You just take off your shirt and shoes and hose yourself down in the driveway. Feels good.

After an hour or so, you've almost forgotten what it was like.

Tomorrow is another day.

Being an Old Guy

Sometimes when I'm speeding* along the sidewalks and streets of Alvin, I wonder what people think of me.  Maybe they don't even see me, as I've found I'm practically invisible in restaurants when I need a server or in a mega-store when I need help finding something.  

Assuming they do see me, though, what do they think?  Do they think an old guy shouldn't be out there running?  That I should be inside sitting quietly with a shawl over my shoulders?  Do they worry that I might fall and break something?  Would they care if I did?

Let's face it: I didn't plan to be old, and I never dreamed that I'd still be running this long after that first attempt way back in 1971.**  In the years since then I've seen other old guys -- some of them as old as I am now, some even older -- out on the run.  I never identified with them.  I just admired them for keeping on.  Now I see there's nothing particularly admirable in it.  You just keep doing it because you've been at it for so long that you're afraid to quit.  Or at least it's that way for me.  I'm scared of what would happen to my body, which by now must be used to the almost daily pounding of the pavement.

Somewhere there's a picture of me in the early '70s, all decked out in new running gear.   New shoes, new shorts, new top.  All blue.  The shoes were Saucony, I think.  Maybe I can find that picture somewhere.  If I do, I'll post it here.  Young guy.  Skinny.  Black hair, and plenty of it.  Those were the days.

Now?  Gray hair, thin on top and almost gone in back.  Not so skinny, and definitely not young.  I don't have any recent photos of me in running gear, nor are there likely ever to be any.  Who'd want to look at them?  Certainly I wouldn't.

The funny thing is, I don't feel much different from the skinny guy in the photo.  On the inside, I'm still young, which I'm sure is true of all old guys.  I still think of myself as the dark-haired kid in the new running togs, ready for anything.

I can remember the routes I used to run, even some the exact quirks of the pavement, the rocks beside the road.  I could go there tomorrow and feel not a thing had changed in 35 years.  

I don't think I will, though.

*By my definition.  Probably not by yours.

**More about that later.  If I get around to it.

They're Watching You (Part 2)

As I said below, my experience in the Houston hospital wasn't the first time I'd been recognized. Once when I was in the grocery store trying to decide whether to buy the Frosted Mini Wheats or the Oat Squares, I noticed a woman giving me the eye.

You'd think I'd be used to that, as we Brad Pitt types are often subjected to such ogling, but somehow I've never adjusted. Anyway, I ignored the woman while I checked the fat content of the Oat Squares, but it didn't work. She sidled up next to me and said, "Don't you jog on Hill Street every day?"

I realized then that it wasn't just my rugged good looks that had aroused her curiosity, so I was little disappointed. I didn't let it show, though. I said, "Yes, I do."

"I thought so," she said, "but I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on."

Now you might think that was an insensitive remark, and I have to admit that I'm glad my wife wasn't around to hear it, but I've had an even more intimate encounter than that one. And it was in a hospital.

Years earlier when we lived in Brownwood, Texas, I had to have a hernia repaired. In those days, hernia repair was serious business, requiring several days in the hospital for recovery, and I wasn't looking forward to it in the least. It turned out to be even more humiliating that I'd ever thought it could be.

I mean, why didn't they tell me to shave myself before I came to the hospital? I could have done that. Then I nobody else would have had to be involved. Geez.

But that wasn't the worst. The worst came after they wheeled me down the hall and into surgery. I was lying on the gurney, buck naked under a sheet. I've never felt any more vulnerable.

The anesthetist came in and set up. He said, "We're just about ready. Start counting backward from 100."

He put something over my face, and a nurse standing beside the gurney threw back the sheet that covered me. There I was, exposed in all my glory.

"Say," she said, "aren't you the guy who jogs down Ninth Street every day?"

I don't think I answered, because I was at about 95 in my countdown, and I don't remember anything after that. For which I'm eternally grateful.