Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

He’d been thinking about thinking.

It happened while he was trying to sell on eBay an unused Thighmaster, a VHS copy of “Ishtar” and a Darth Vader action figure missing an arm.

He leaned back in his uncomfortable ergonomic desk chair and sighed deeply. He felt like an out-of-tune guitar.

Life had begun to feel like a test he hadn’t studied for.

A day at the beach wasn’t a day at the beach anymore.

His left bower no longer seemed to be able to trump aces.

He was thinking of doing the unthinkable.

He was working up a brain sweat, but he hadn’t thought of what it would be yet.

His friends and family told him that he had an intimacy problem, but they don’t really know him.

His wife wanted him to remodel the basement.

He protested that he wouldn’t be able to do that until winter. He didn’t want to leave them without an operating basement during the tornado season.

“Where would we go for tornadoes?” he’d asked.

“We’d have the best luck finding them in Oklahoma,” his wife replied.

He supposed that she had always been a smart aleck, but he hadn’t noticed it until the last couple of years.

It was like the time when he was feeling lousy. Some kind of flu was beating him up. He used what little energy he had left to call his doctor. He was told that the doctor was so busy, he couldn’t get an appointment for two weeks. He protested that he could be dead by then.

His wife, overhearing the phone conversation, said loudly, “Don’t worry. If that happens, I’ll call and cancel your appointment.”

He loved his wife, but they looked at the world through different eyes. The holes in her head once matched those in his, but no longer. Their his and her closets had become hers and hers. One time, she lost an earring while bringing groceries into the house. She looked everywhere, but had no luck finding them. The earrings had been an anniversary gift from him. She loved them and shed a tear when she gave up the search.

When he learned of the disappearance, he began searching, despite his wife’s claim that she’d looked high and low.

He was able to find the earring within a few minutes.

His wife was both relieved and amazed.

“How did you manage to find it?” She asked. “I looked everywhere.”

“We weren’t looking for the same thing,” he explained. “You looked for an earring. I was looking for $300.”

He loved his wife. They shared everything. They split the cooking duties. She called in the orders, and he picked up the food.

He was thinking of doing something he’d never done before. Something like sitting down next to a stranger in a fast food restaurant and saying, “Excuse me, is that hamburger taken?”

He’d tried doing new things before. He’d never forget the terror he’d experienced when he entered a tournament for first-time darts players at a local bar. Oh, the humanity!

He decided to take up running. He was young enough.

He’d never really been a runner. Oh, he ran when he was in school when he was ordered to and feared the consequences if he didn’t comply.

He didn’t run because he didn’t see much point to it. Gravity always wins.

He depended on Anne Lamott’s book “Bird By Bird” for inspiration. The author’s 10-year-old brother was trying to finish a report on birds that he’d put off until the last minute. He was at the kitchen table close to tears, stunned by the task at hand and surrounded by paper, pencils and bird books. His father put a hand on his son’s shoulder and advised, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

That’s how the man planned on conquering running. Little by little.

The man decided to jog around the local high school’s football field. He huffed and puffed along as the football team practiced on the field.

The players were running wind sprints. The man told himself, “I’ll keep running until they quit running.”

Bird by bird. That’s how he rolled.

So he ran. And they sprinted. And he ran. And they ran. He ran until he could run no more. He stopped in utter exhaustion.

One of the players, equally drained, approached the man and said, “Boy, I’m glad you finally stopped, mister. The coach told us that we had to keep running wind sprints until that old guy stopped jogging.”

 

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.