pigeon

slow jogger

Habits, patterns, getting fit, staying in shape.

Cassette player in the Toyota Celica.

Summer evenings with nothing pressing to do, nothing particularly to worry about, except maybe staying in shape.

Dad woulda been in his early 40s when he offered to take me with him to this new thing he was doing, which was jogging indoor laps at Houck Field House at SEMO, the university he was a per’fesser at. Being an embryonic teenager, I figured why not. I had billions of seconds remaining on the clock, so might as well do something completely empty of semantic content. Plus I loved my dad and hanging out with him felt quietly firm, like being a creative mouse with good habits.

Or maybe we took the F100, three on the tree. I never did learn to shift that fucking thing.

I think adolescence is when your dad starts to flip back and forth between two worlds, juxtaposed: one in which he’s young (jogging!) and one in which he’s old (also jogging!).

When we got there and took the stairs up to the ancient indoor track, it looked like something out of a 19th century sanitarium. Dim light, barred windows. Echoes.

Dad told me to feel free to go on ahead because he wasn’t going to go really fast and I could probably go faster. But I didn’t. I had nothing against “working out” but I was also in no hurry. And I was really there to hang out with him. And I was a little self-conscious.

The moment he flipped into the world where he was old was the moment we crossed paths with another faculty member — a guy who, it turned out, was my dad’s frequent jogging companion. That in itself would have been unremarkable, except this guy was — no doubt about it — old. He had the posture, you know?

Even that wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for the sign this guy had pinned to his shirt: SLOW JOGGER.

This man was the human equivalent of a combine trundling down the highway, with the red triangle on the back.

Why be so apologetic? We can see you. Shuffle on; we’ll go around you!

How could my still agile, alert father be athletically commingled with this exoskeleton of a man, this frail perambulator?

Come to think of it, I may have accelerated on ahead after all.

I don’t remember going back there any other time. We went to the outdoor track a few times. “Track” was almost the only gym unit I was any good at, besides swimming, because I got outvoted and we never got to have a frisbee unit, so it was nice to be able to do something in front of my family that made me look physically capable. I could jump pretty far!

My dad’s jogging phase didn’t last very long. Oddly enough, going across the street from the field house to Pagliai’s for a perfect thin-crust Chicago-style spicy sausage pizza made him flip back into the world where he was young.

He would flip back and forth many more times over the next few decades, until, like a spun coin precessing towards a final decision, a few years ago he flipped towards the old side and I think he’s gonna stay there now.

When this particular pigeon popped up in the random draw, I was like, huh. I do remember that but I don’t have anything to say about it. But I started anyway, and once I typed that last paragraph, the one right above this one, I remembered again for the umpteenth time: keep going at least until you get to the thing you didn’t realize you were thinking about. The thing that touches the chord. That’s what releases whatever you didn’t know needed to be released. Until the next time.

Earlier today, typing in my journal at the UWM Student Union (I do like hanging around college campuses, old habits die hard) I came up with three rules. I like coming up with three rules. It’s the most I can follow at any one time. Do you want to know what today’s three rules are? I’ll tell you anyway:

1. Stay sober
2. Don’t buy anything
3. Do the thing or don’t do the thing, but don’t not do the thing.

Aaaaaaand, we’re gonna leave it there for now, because it’s nice out and I want to go for a walk. Not a jog, though. Fuck that. I’m a fast walker, not a slow jogger. Kind of seems like I’ve been doing some between-the-two-worlds flipping of my own, lately. I guess we all do.

Doesn’t mean you have to pin a sign to your shirt and tell everyone all about it, though! It’ll be obvious soon enough anyway.