In Evansville, Indiana, sixty-five-degree weather in August is almost as unusual as finding Mr. Wonka’s Golden Ticket in your candy bar, so we renewed our walk this BBRR day with an extra punch in our step, and fewer visual humidex roadblocks to our line of sight. It was cool this morning, we had more energy and could see everything better. Yea, that is what I meant to say. Summer humidity here is an index people check as closely as their phone messages. We locals walk outside into an unbreathable soup, and even cool relief of a swimming pool can’t ward off the greenish tint of algae.
As you may know by now, we walk on the grounds of the State Hospital, or as a friend of mine used to call it, the State Horse Pistol. Oh, the Anguish Language. Shuffling along the paths, we have begun to include conversations about such topics as hammer toe, athlete’s foot, orthotics, and shin splints. I’ve decided to put all those issues under one heading called Footburps because Podiatry sounds too much like an excuse, sort of like starting out a sentence with “But I…”. Pretty soon you will talk yourself out of putting one foot in front of the other, and that certainly breaks every rule I know about walking.
Compliments to one of new members: Polly is going back into teaching after retiring for a couple of years. This a not a flighty decision but comes from a soulful desire to make a difference in someone else’s life, to be in the trenches again duking it out with kids. Teaching is not a job you do for the money, and if you are then, in my experience, you probably are not lighting those kids on fire in the classroom. Round of applause from the BBRR club, Polly. We are there for you, ready to pop in as guest speakers, demonstrators, or if needed, give the famous Bender One-Handed Applause (a sort of quiet standing ovation).
As if to celebrate her triumphant return to teaching, Polly took the outside lane as we turned off our usual route and walked a half-mile down Vann Avenue, which is to say we took our lives in our own hands. In Evansville, drivers seem to go out of their way to merge into the lane next to the sidewalk (where we were walking) just for the sheer fun of watching your eyes dilate and the part in your hair disappear. We did make it back to the hospital lake alive, but my PTSD blocked any memory of what was said before or after, and I had nightmares of Yellow Cabs falling out of the sky onto my head. Coincidentally, one of our walkers noticed a bottle of whiskey that had been thrown out of a passing vehicle, evidence of some poor soul’s desperate attempt to multitask while driving.
I prefer my minister’s method: He has a wonderful habit of picking up street trash on his thrice weekly wake-up run around his neighborhood. Recently, early one morning as he hit his stride, he ran past a discarded empty vodka bottle along the road and responding to the nudge of the Holy Spirit, scooped it up for disposal at the end of his jog. As he rounded the corner towards home, a neighbor out enjoying her morning coffee, spotted the bottle in his hand, and yelled: “Hittin’ the juice a little early today, aren’t you pastor?”
No one in our group drinks and walks, and no one picked up the booze bottle on our BBRR jaunt today either. I’m kind of glad. Footburp: I’ve been through that baptism, and it ain’t pretty. I’ll stick to putting one foot in front of the other and see where it takes me.