the Half

"It's just the Half," I tell myself, alternately, after, "I'll just pick up my shirt," and, "It couldn't hurt to walk." 

Months upon a time ago, I registered for the Go! St. Louis race (exclamation in the trademark) almost as an afterthought. Cincinnati's Flying Pig was the goal, and maybe it still kind of could be, but friends who had been motivated by if-Allison-can-surely-I signed up to race, and riding a wave of sure-that'd-be-fun and I'll-need-a-long-run, I put down my money. 

"I'll run it all," I said, maybe weeks after running 26.2 (except for the parts that I walked). 

Well. 

That will not be happening. Instead of  miles upon miles upon ever increasing training miles, the last ten weeks have been filled by dates with the sports medicine doc and the physical therapist, the elliptical and lately, barely, the treadmill. I am in no way ready to run 13.1 on the pavement.  Thousands of conspicuously consumed insurance company dollars attest that my tibia has healed and there's nothing left but chronic medial tibial stress syndrome, which is just shin splints in dress clothes.  Just, that is, the kind of nagging issue that affects daily life not in the least but can derail the whole running thing, and now we're thirteen days from the race. 

I'm certain the doc would advise against, were I to ask him. 10% more distance a week is the standard rec, in which case I'd be ready in, oh, July. 

But it's only the Half. And I could walk, would have to, much as the thought of that pains me. Hundreds if not thousands will, on purpose, as a goal.  I suppose I could always wear my cast. I expect in my not quite-as-fit shape it will feel like plenty of challenge, and if it hurts, well, then we'll see. I know the difference between the bad pain and the deal-with-it, and I promise not to do anything excessively stupid.  Really. 

More than five months ago, a starting line was a major milestone, and I learned about satisfaction and effort. This is not that, not even close, though it might be about crossing the finish. 

scholarship

"You can't see me," I am occasionally tempted to remind, "but I can hear you."  The seat backs are tall and the rows aren't crowded and we're all Americans practiced in the art of creating space where there's not much: don't see me and I won't see you, we generally pretend. 

But I'm nosy, frankly, and with five hours to kill, if your conversation bleeds through the gaps between my seat and the one I've cluttered with jacket and Newsweek and the hope that no one claims it, I'm going to listen. I just am. Often the eavesdropping price is paid with I- can't-believe-you-said-that or silent entreaties to shut up; more often the snatches are puzzle pieces fit together as I switch between shuffle and podcast. So this time, when the train pulls up to the station and I see my rear neighbors for the first time, I nod at the letter jackets and corresponding purple sweats: that fits. I know the family is up in anticipation of a Tuesday meeting with a coach at Robert Morris. A teenage girl stands from behind and confirms that the voice talking to his parent was the brother, not the athlete, but I cannot place her sport until the mother unwittingly offers their imaginary narrator a better conclusion than expected: 

"Get your balls," she says, "go ahead." And the girl walks by my slowly dawning smile with an air of  here-goes-nothing as she coordinates her equipment: three bowling balls, at least. 

Oprah

They're working on homework: it's algebra (always algebra) and bio and geo and chem; histories of conquistadors and doughboys running concurrent and intersecting, as so appropriate, with graphic reports on STDs.  


It is, on a good day, a "How do I?" from one corner, "I don't get it," from the other and idle blank looks spotted from across the room.  It is multi-multi-get-them-on-tasking, but I am accustomed to leaping from equation to definition to question; it's high school: it's not that hard. 


But sometimes I am thrown.  Sometimes it's chemistry-- I've drawn the line--or a neuron misfired or just a blank in my less comprehensive-than-they-believe knowledge. But sometimes a question is so unexpected that I must pause and gather my wits. As in when a girl nine years removed from Mexico poses this particular query in the most American of accents: 


"Who's Oprah?" 


I falter. "What?" 


I am generally expert in explaining the most mundane of mundanities without a trace of detectable, "Really?"  


But near a decade in Oprah's world without the slightest notion? I'm not a fan, but I'm fascinated, and for the moment, stumped. 


"She's on TV. . .she's made movies. . .she has a magazine. She's really rich. . ." I trail off, consider. "She's Oprah," I want to say. 


For a few seconds more, I try to define through example and fact: Chicago, celebrities, crying middle-aged women. She looks at me like a foreigner. I turn the laptop to display a screenful of Google images; she blinks blankly. I don't bother to mention the weight.

She shrugs, incrementally informed about one more random American thing, and returns to whatever she was doing;  I scan the room for the slacking or perplexed as I exit a page full recognizable-to-most-but-not-all faces. Irrelevant? Not to me.  It's one more example of all the references surely missed in conversation and reading and lecture. No wonder, I think to myself in reminder. 


They're not as Americanized as we think.  

Excellent

politics

It's a stage-managed set-up, choreographed down to the hand-selected crowd of diverse-as-we-can-manage teenagers told to wear church clothes-- whatever that means-- to an assembly in an unnaturally empty high school they don't attend.

I don't care.

Because despite photo op, despite fund raiser (the true trip agenda), despite political push that just needs a live audience, the fact remains that the President is coming- the President!- and a Haitian boy four months out of a now-crumbled orphanage will be there.

"It's like a dream," he really said, and though I expect some teenage shade of he-just-talked-he-didn't-see-me-it-was-boring disappointment on Thursday, the fact remains that this brand new American is going to see his President, and he's excited. So am I.

I'm told that plenty of students were irked at not being chosen: the usual StuCo Honor Society suspects are too many in number-- and largely too pale in complexion- to be selected by default. Instead, the administrative viewfinder widened- by order, it appears- and through a little affirmative racial profiling action a few equally upstanding but lesser known kids appeared on the schoolwide radar. So be it: from the purely artificial something genuine has sprung.