Reckless racing

A couple of weeks ago, I received some very concerning news.

Don’t worry, it’s not cancer or anything. Although if I’m being perfectly honest about my health, I will divulge that a recent routine health screening revealed that I, Brooke High-Strung Andrus, suffer from high blood pressure. Shocker.

No, this particular bombshell came not from a medical professional, but from the infinite Internet time-suck known as BuzzFeed. The undisputed king of trivial lists, laugh-out-loud GIFs, and snarky commentary recently ventured into new territory: interactive quizzes.

Now look, I am fully aware that these quizzes are the epitome of meaningless frivolity—a digital metaphor for everything that is wrong with America. But like KFC, Lunesta, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, these silly little questionnaires are habit-forming. Eventually, you simply won’t be able to go on with your day until you know BuzzFeed’s opinion on which Girl Scout cookie you are or why you’re single. They’re basically the Generation Y equivalent of newspaper horoscopes, and most of the time, the results are pretty harmless. You might think, “You know what? I am a Tagalong. Thank you for enlightening me to this very important analysis of my personality, BuzzFeed!”

But every once in a while, you’ll get a result so horrifically appalling that it will stop you dead in your tracks and force you to completely reevaluate your life. Such was the case when I took the quiz titled “Are You Ready to Have Kids?” Here’s was BuzzFeed’s advice to me:

 Image courtesy of buzzfeed.com

Yeah. Scary. Obviously, I had to take BuzzFeed’s two cents on this particular matter with a grain of salt. I mean, let’s be real for a second: I live in an apartment with a hot water heater the size of a beer keg and shoddy electrical wiring that prevents me from running the dryer and the microwave at the same time. I put off removing moldy, rotting leftovers from my refrigerator in hopes that a tiny fridge fairy might come along and take care of it while I sleep. Perhaps worst of all, I believe it is 100-percent acceptable to wear socks that look like this, because come on, the rest of the sock is still totally fine:

 As you can plainly see, approximately 99 percent of the sock remains intact.

Also, I have to question the accuracy of any quiz that doesn’t offer “Every Taylor Swift Song” as possible answer to the question “What’s your relationship status?” Still, even with such glaring fallacies, I knew the quiz couldn’t be completely devoid of meaning. I just had to read between the lines a little bit.

Clearly, the BuzzFeed powers that be didn’t just take my quiz answers at face value; they used them as a series of tiny windows from which they caught a series of tiny glimpses into my very soul. And from the sum of those glimpses, they drew the only logical conclusion they could: “Here’s a woman whose idea of a great Friday night is a bottle of Yellow Tail and a shitty David Duchovny movie on Netflix. Seriously, could she be any more uncool? Jeez, lady, go lease a Dodge Grand Caravan already!”

After noodling on it a bit, I concluded that the quiz geniuses at BuzzFeed weren’t actually telling me to have a baby; they were merely telling me to stop acting like I’m about to have a baby. To stop being so predictable and responsible. To go out on some limbs and take some risks more daring than buying clearance meat or parking in a spot marked “For Jimmy John’s Customers Only” before walking straight through the doors of Chipotle. (To be fair, I really did feel like I was living on the edge of the law. It said violators would be towed at the owner’s expense!)

So, as an answer to BuzzFeed’s desperate plea for me to stop wasting my youth, I pulled the most insanely reckless move that a straight-laced distance runner could possibly pull: I signed up for a 5K race mere hours before start time. Okay, okay, look: I’m never going to be Justin-Bieber-drag-racing-crazy, or even Tom-Cruise-couch-jumping-on-Oprah-crazy. But check this out: I didn’t taper at all, I drank multiple beers the night before the race, and I ate a pre-race dinner most competitive runners would consider pure suicide: spicy Italian sausage pizza.

If I still haven’t convinced you of how coco-bananas my spontaneous race sign-up truly was, take a look at this flowchart depicting my normal decision process for race entry:

But I didn’t limit my new, more carefree lease on life to the registration process. Oh no. When I arrived at the race to find that there were approximately 12 available toilets for a crowd of nearly 2,000 runners, I made the quick—and spontaneous—decision to forego my warm-up in favor of evacuating my bladder. When I caught myself waffling over whether to wear my long-sleeve top in the race—chilly morning, no warm-up jog—I promptly shut down the internal debate that was raising my blood pressure more and more by the second and spontaneously ditched my pull-over. And when, about a half mile into the race, I noticed that my forearms were going numb from the cold, I shrugged it off and thought, “Meh. Give ’em another mile.”

With about 1,000 meters to go, I zeroed in on a woman in the distance—the female leader, as far as I could tell. Instead of hemming and hawing over whether my legs had enough gas left in the tank to catch her—as my former, baby-ready self might have done—I picked up the pace without allowing a single “Should I?” to cross my neural pathways. And when I surged past her with the finish line in sight, instead of stressing over whether she would come back to edge me out in the end, I thought, “Let’s wrap this thing up so I can get my free pancakes.” (Yes, there were free pancakes—I didn’t throw the decision chart completely out the window.)

And as I consumed said pancakes while enjoying a bit of entertainment at the expense of the poor soul who was conned into wearing a plush pancake costume—again, the decision chart still applies here—I felt content with both my performance and my newfound personal philosophy of spontaneity.

Even during the awards ceremony, when I found out that I not only did not win but was, in fact, beaten by nearly a minute, I just shrugged my shoulders, nodded my head, and clapped my hands for the badass runner lady who was so fast that I didn’t even see her during the race. (Hey, at least I didn’t take yet another page from my girl T-Swift’s book.)

To be honest, I was kind of impressed with my own maturity. No wonder BuzzFeed thought I would make an excellent parent. Clearly, any children of mine would be perfect pictures of poise and sportsmanship—even if they had a few holes in their socks.

S#@! old people say

Seniors say the darndest things. (No, it’s not a Bill Cosby-hosted television show featuring old peoples’ hilariously cute responses to random interview questions—although it totally should be. I think we can all agree that TLC is in desperate need of some fresh content. They’ve kind of overdone it on the whole freaks-and-train-wrecks-reality-TV front.)

I’m no Bill Cosby, but even in the absence of quick wit and colorful cable-knits, I seem to be a magnet for comical commentary from the 65-plus crowd—especially when I’m running. Well, comical to me, anyway. I’m sure some of these episodes fall into the “you kinda had to be there” category. But hey, this is my blog. I was there, and it’s not my fault that you weren’t. (Not that I want you stalking me or anything. That would be creepy and would likely result in you taking a pepper spray shot to the face.)

Anyway, in an effort to give you the most complete picture possible, I have prefaced each laughable one-liner with a few contextual details that should make you feel more like you were there, even though—again—it’s not my fault that you weren’t.

The time: Early morning (we’re talking pre-6 a.m.—prime senior-spotting time)

The place: Immaculately landscaped walking path in the middle of a bustling 55-plus community.

The character: An 80-year-old, 5’4” man in red swish-swish shorts, a striped polo shirt, and a khaki fishing hat.

The comment: “Are you sure you belong in this neighborhood?”

The response: Taken by surprise and unable to formulate a verbal response before leaving Gilligan’s Island in the dust, my running buddy and I instead burst into a weirdly synchronized nervous giggle and left it at that.

The time: Later that same morning.

The place: Residential road named for some Indian* tribe.

The character: A remarkably fit 60-year-old woman in Jackie-O sunglasses and a Jane Fonda leotard.

The comment: “It’s so good to see some young blood out here!”

The response: My 6-in-the-morning brain isn’t really capable of producing anything more expressive than a classic Echo Response (e.g., “Good morning to you, too!” or “What a beautiful day, indeed!” or “Yes, there are dead gnats all over my face!”). But that wasn’t really an option in this case. My friend and I talked over each other in an clumsy but good-intentioned answer that came out as something like, “We also you think awesome fit great exercise leotard!”

The time: Mere minutes after above incident.

The place: Main boulevard in the same neighborhood.

The character: A very tan, very enthusiastic 70-year-old man in a white Toyota RAV4.

The comment: “Hey! Stop! Stop! Come back!”

The response: My friend and I were split on this one. I—being the product of an upbringing with inordinate exposure to Dateline and Nancy Grace (courtesy of my mother)—did not acknowledge the motorist, instead picking up my pace and scanning the roadway for emergency escape routes. She, on the other hand, sauntered right up to the open passenger side window like a child who had just been offered candy and a puppy. Feeling slightly responsible for her safety, I backtracked to the open window, arriving just in time to hear our senior stalker proudly proclaim that he has run every day for the past 35 years. He then congratulated us for not being fat like everyone else in our generation. I politely thanked him for this “compliment” and ushered my friend away from the vehicle before he invited us into the back seat to check out his “race medal collection.”  

The time: Early evening (another prime senior-spotting time—post-four-o’clock-supper but pre-double-gin-and-tonic-nightcap).

The place: Shaded walking path.

The character: A tall, slightly overweight man in plaid cotton shorts, long tube socks, and black sneakers. At his side: an energetic, impeccably groomed wire-haired fox terrier.

The comment: “What high school are you with?”

The response: Five seconds of awkward silence followed by five seconds of awkward laughter. Unsure of whether we should be flattered or offended, my friend and I fumbled for a witty comeback. We were nearly out of earshot when I finally chimed in with: “Oh, we’re out of high school.” She quickly added: “Yeah, we’re out of college!” Of course I am totally kicking myself now, as it would have been huh-larious if we’d advised him to get his eyes checked because we were actually a couple of retired widows.

The time: Early evening.

The place: Wide, well-maintained public sidewalk.

The character: Friendly elderly gentleman on a recumbent bike.

The comment: “You’re going ten miles an hour!”

The response: “LIAR!” (OK, I didn’t really say that, but it was obvious that he was either Canadian or Confused—Canadian if his speedometer was actually in kilometers per hour, and Confused if he simply forgot how to do numbers in the midst of a brief “senior moment.”) In reality, though, we politely moved to the edge of the path, let him pass, thanked him for the rate of motion estimate, and quietly debunked said estimate based on the fact that it was over 100 degrees outside and there was no way in hell—literally, because I’m pretty sure Dante’s first circle of hell is actually Phoenix, Arizona—that we were churning out six-minute miles.

The time: Later that evening.

The place: Drinking fountain on the border of the local golf course.

The character: Doc from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (minus brass buckle belt, add fanny pack).

The comment: “I’ve got a bar of soap if you want it.”

The response: To put this comment into context, imagine two sweaty, panting, half-clothed runners (us) splashing cold water all over our heads, faces, shoulders, necks, chests, and arms. I mean, we might as well have climbed into the basin of this drinking fountain—and probably would have had we not been concerned about compromising its structural integrity. Anyway, we were so surprised by the sharp-witted humor of our white-haired onlooker that we froze mid-bath, looked at each other with raised eyebrows and pursed lips as we warded off a bout of hysterical laughter, and muttered something about how nice and cool the water was. Once we were a safe distance away, we let loose all of our pent-up giggles and, after we’d caught our breath, decided there was a strong possibility that Mr. Magoo was actually serious about the soap because heck, you never know what old people are carrying around in those giant waist pouches with their IHOP coupons and their jars of Cetaphil.

Well, that’s it for this week’s edition of Seniors Say the Darndest Things. Join me next time when I delve into sexting, thong underwear, and other inappropriate topics of conversation for retirees having boozy dinners at family pizza restaurants.     

    

 Zippity boop bappity bop.

*Should this be Native American? I can never keep up on what’s PC these days.