The Third Day is the Worst

“What happened?”

“Why are you limping?”

“Did someone hit you in the knees with a sledgehammer?”

Given my current state of motion as a hurky-jerky Night of the Living Dead extra, the last one seems the mostly likely. In fact, my legs, and specifically my calves, feel as if they’re made of painful lead weights. Weights that stretch and stab you with little knives of shooting agony at every step.

I’ve started running again.

Thanks to the magical wonder of glucosamine ,which a few studies have found assist people with moderate to severe painful joint problems to get out and exercise again, I’ve found that I can actually run and skip and jump and prance with the fairies again.

I haven’t found any fairies yet, but when I do I’m gonna prance them to death!

That will teach those fairies.

Still, all good things come with a price.

I signed up at a local gym at a huge discount through my office. I’ve never really subscribed to any one gym as being superior to any other, mostly because I’ve trained enough to not need any hand-holding for my workouts. Others may find a motivational “coach” a big boon, but most of my coaches just said, “Run that way . . . really fast. If anything gets in your way . . . turn.” It’s advice that has served me well.

So now, instead of eating lunch and adding to my ever-expanding waist-line, I go run a couple of miles. Back in the day, a couple of miles was anywhere between five and fifteen. Now, a couple of miles means just that.

Two.

Sometimes a third mile will try to sneak in there, but I’m generally pretty watchful and shut that third mile down, kicking it repeatedly until it limps away, beaten and rejected.

Starting Wednesday, I did my first run, set a pace at about 10 minutes per mile, and set out. Just for comparison, in college I would run a 10k (6.2 miles, and yes the point-two is important) pace under 7 minute miles. If you think that’s fast, the winners usually came in with paces of 5 to 6 minutes per mile. By the time I crossed the finish line, they had already accepted their medals, completed their cool-downs and were loading the bus to go eat.

The first day is always the easiest. You haven’t run in some time. You forget how grueling covering the miles can actually be, especially the tedium of being on a treadmill without any decent music to listen to. While you’re certainly out of shape, you find that the old habits die hard, muscles still function, and given even half a chance you could probably outrun most of the residents as Shady Oaks Retirement Facility. The first day was great.

You even have the delusion that since this run is so easy you could work up to your former Olympic-hopeful level when you were sixteen.

The first day is always great.

Thursday, the second day, the muscles have had time to analyze and discuss what you’ve just put them through, and traditionally their response is akin to a raging wildfire of seething agony and joint fatigue. The muscles go on a protest march, demanding a return to the status quo of lazy desk work, and nothing more taxing than setting the cruise-control.

It’s important that you do not give into their demands, even if their bargaining becomes violent.

Which is exactly what will happen on the third day.

The third day, which happens to be today, is the worst. The muscles are now a raging inferno, a runaway train of fury and molten steel. Going up stairs is not nearly as hard as going down them. You equate to Frankenstein’s Monster, with dead tissue brought back to life and forced to obey a mind with a will toward motion. You have some sense of what one day on the Bataan Death March may have felt like.

Except with out all that pesky hunger, dehydration, heat exhaustion and beatings with rifle-butts.

So today is the third day, and the third day is always the worst. Your body reflect that you chance of ever even showing up to watch the Olympics ended while Ronald Reagan was still in office. You’ve been kidding yourself that you can even walk competitively, much less run. Pain increases by orders of magnitude the older you get, which I should know by now. You either run, or you don’t run. But you don’t run then stop for three years then pick it up again.

There should be a law.

Yet, running is my addiction. It’s like cocaine, except there’s no illegality to it, and the side effects don’t include emaciation, impotence and death. Glucosamine may not be the cure for the common cold, and I still feel a little discomfort in my knees, but I can get up on the treadmill, which is much more forgiving to knees than pounding the pavement, and I can clean a couple of miles on my lunch break.

Because

Age equates erroneously in most people's minds with maturity, experience and, ultimately, equality.

To wit, we do not give children under a certain age the right to sit behind a two-ton death ram with impunity. We force onerous premiums for insurance on their parents, and if the parents are smart, pass that inconvenience on to them. We give them double and triple points on their licenses when they do wrong, and jerk those laminated freedom-passes the moment they cross the line once too often. We scare them with films like “The Blood on the Bricks Flows Red” and "He Smoked, He Drank, He Beheaded His Girlfriend."

Or, at least, we should.

We do not trust them, because they are not old enough.

Once they turn 18, they can die for their country. At 19 they can pollute their lungs and risk tongue, lip and cheek cancer with tobacco products. At 21 they can pickle their livers with alcohol and be jailed for bedding their high school girlfriends.

But until they’re 25, they can not rent a car.

They can’t even attempt to run the country, as they certainly know what’s best, until they turn 35, by which time we’ve safely, carefully, precisely enchanted them to the “way things are” and franchised them to “how they will always be.”

Because they are not yet old enough.

Apparently, on certain anniversaries of the day we came screaming, yelling and crying our way into this world, a hormonal-chemical-biological change occurs, and our maturity level increases above that from the previous day. This is readily apparent in parents who, at little league games, never resort to violence. Soccer-moms who refrain from punching the coach when the game appeared to be too physical.

Clearly, an Intelligent Design.

But what does this have to do with me and mine? Allow me to illucidate:

So it was that Lil (31) and I (33) celebrated out third wedding anniversary (leather) out of town in the wonderful tourist trap land of Big Bear Lake, California.

After a night of PG-13 rated action in which we both enjoyed about five minutes of television, and then become incredibly annoyed by all the advertisements, we awoke and went in search of vittles. The first destination choice was an IHOP, for which I have never turned a thumb up or down. However, because Lil’s flights of fancy when it comes to food generally depend on whatever fills her vision at that moment, we ended up at a Denny’s.

Or, perhaps, it was a Dee’s.

I can never remember which is which, except that one serves chili on food and the other doesn’t.

I always manage to end up in the one that doesn’t, and kick myself for not remembering because, along with movies and decent sushi, I also love chili.

Chili and cheese.

Chili and cheese with onions.

Chili-cheese burgers.

Chili-cheese omelets.

Chili-cheese dogs.

Chili and rice.

Chili and rice and hotdogs in an omlete.

Chili is what the gods of Olympia had wanted when they had to settle for ambrosia. Chili is what the Israelites were after when they were stuck with simple manna from heaven.

Is there anything chili can't do?

Chili is proof that there is a God, that He does love us and He wants us to be happy.

On this particular chilly and pun-intended morning, as I entered the non-chili-vending Denny’s (may they burn in the Hell of the Upside Down Sinner), we waited patiently, slightly longer than I would normally wait, but this was our anniversary celebration, so I was also slightly more than usually happy with life, the world and everything. Even Keanu Reeves seemed slightly less annoying as he joined us at the “Please Wait” counter, with a thumbs-up and a “Whoa” for greeting. I ignored him, as usual, but without my standard air of embarassed chagrin.

Finally, this older lady finally came to take us to our table by first saying, "C'mon kids."

Kids.

Not, youngins.

Not children.

Not thirty-somethings.

Kids.

Since she had us by at least twenty years (it's apparently not polite to ask, as my ice-water covered head will note) and clearly equated herself above us, regardless of our net household average income, because of her age in comparison with ours. When we were born, she was already saving for a mortgage, a car payment, or perhaps a Victrola phonograph. Clearly, she had, years before, reviewed the marketplace and found the food-service industry to be the one with the most potential for growth. I would wager it still has the most potential, and it will remain so in the years, decades and centuries to come.

I’m going to put it down to the fact that my wife still looks twenty.

Because she does.

Temper, Temper

Hi.

My name is RobRoy McCandless, and I have a temper.

I’m proud to say that it’s been . . . ummm, let’s see . . . thirty-six hours since I last had an extreme outburst of anger, and that was totally and completely justified because the guy was trying to ram me in his mini-van filled with old people.

Seriously.

But this morning, I am proud to say, that although the opportunity presented itself, I remained calm, cool and collected under extreme pressure.

“You don’t need to go touching people!”

I looked up from my book, and over at Kathy, who is part of my train family. The lady behind us had just yelled. I generally attempt to reject my more base instincts to rubberneck, but the lady (and I use the term very, very loosely) behind us had not only raised her voice, she was yelling, loudly and with a full furor or righteous vigor.

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to let you know . . .”

“Well, you don’t need to go touching people!”

"I'm really sorry . . ."

"I don't give a good goddamn what you are or aren't, you shouldn't be touching my personal person or anyone else with your grubby, insensitive . . ."

It went on like this for some time.

The woman would not be placated, not by admissions of guilt, fervent and heart-felt apologies, or mustard gas.

What?

It’s for medicinal purposes.

My morning commute reading had been interrupted, and clearly this tirade wasn’t going to end any time soon. Since it seemed like so much fun, I decided to join in. Perhaps this is some new game the peasant people play on the train? I was willing to join in the fun and festivities.

“Ma’am,” I said, and should have regretted it when she turned her fiery fury upon me, “maybe you should calm down.”

No, really, that’s what I said. That was all I said. Her response evoked some impressive and colorful uses of language. A couple of the truck drivers in the car blushed. Flames erupted from her eyes and singed the seat covers.

I smiled.

“Ma’am, you really need to sit down. If you still have a problem, we can call the conductor and he can help you out, but please, you should sit down.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“No one, but you should sit down.”

“That’s right! YOU ARE NO ONE! DON’T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN WHEN SOMEONE PUTS THEIR HANDS ON ME!”

“And she apologized for it, so please, you should sit down.”

“WHO MADE YOU HER ATTORNEY?”

Again, I smiled, and this time, interestingly enough, I could see her doubt the position of righteous indignation.

“Please, ma’am, it's time to sit down.”

It was then that a SWAT team broke through one of the windows, piled on top of the woman and wrested control of the bomb from her.

Well, that’s what would have happened if we’d been in L.A.

But this was the Orange County line, and we just don’t do things like that.

Instead, as something of a letdown, the woman just fumed, sat down, and muttered under her breath for the remainder of the ride.

I didn’t stand up, I didn’t get angry, and I didn’t lose my temper.

Perhaps I’m growing?