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MY ALL-STAR TRACK CAREER
The True Story
I did not want to sign up for track in high school. I wanted to ride my horses and just go to school to learn.
But Coach Nesbitt saw me running to my car one day and you know the rest. I don't know if he was desperate for sprinters or
what, but within a half-hour I had a warm-up suit and a track team jacket and a bag. Nifty. I liked it.
I was little and fast. I never knew why we had to stay after school to "practice" because frankly, running is a solitary pursuit.
Sure, you're competing (if you're on a team, that is) against others but I was only after my own personal best.
The track meet at Silver Valley High School is where I got my reputation. I'd won my event at all the meets, I just didn't
care. I didn't warm up like the others did, I found that pretentious. I just stood there watching my competitors twist their
bodies and waiting for the gun to go off. I usually had a Twinkie. I was very well known at my high school for being a Twinkie
Taste Tester. It had been noted that some schools were selling inferior Twinkies in their vending machines; others seemed
to have an excellent product. So I stood there munching and watching with some admiration (those chicks had such great bodies!
And they were TALL! I was just....short). If any among you does not see the irony of eating a Twinkie before a competition,
it is akin to lighting up a cigarette when you're sitting on the bench at a basketball game waiting to be called in. It's
not kosher to do that. And I did not care. I just waited for the gun to go off.
When it did, I ran until it was time to stop. That's it. I was far more interested in academic pursuits so sometimes Coach
Nesbitt had to come and tell me to put my damned books down because my event was up.
For the Silver Valley meet, that stupid stupid Jana Carlson was out with the flu and Coach Nesbitt was frantic for a girl
to run the 1500 meters.
That's four times around the track.
I was used to sixty meters. I was a sprinter!
But hey. I just shrugged and said, "Oh hell, I'll do it."
So when the gun went off I sprinted. I was quite a ways around the track when I saw my competitors, far far far behind me
because they were pretty much still on the other side of the track. And I realized that I had to run this thing three more
times. Assuming I could get around it once.
I couldn't. Nobody can do that at the pace I was running.
But I did not slow down! No! Not Mouse!
I kept right on running and as I rounded the lap I just kept going straight and ran right into the parking lot.
My best friend, Karen, had driven us to Silver Valley. She was not in track (smart girl) but being a few months older than
me, she had her full driver's license. I figured I could just hide in her car until she came looking for me (because surely
they'd be looking for me) and we could go on home and forget this nasty track business.
But Karen was in her car, she was driving her car, and Glen Ross was in the passenger seat. I knew right off they were going
off school grounds to make out because if Karen was not a track hero, she sure as hell was a collector of boys.
I ran in front of her car and waved my arms like a football referee so that she would stop.
I really can't say how this happened, but I do not for one moment believe Karen "didn't see" me. I may be short but I'm not
a midget and I was right in front of her car and then I wasn't, I was on the ground and I'd been thrown somehow, and she ran
over my hand. Maybe I skidded on the gravel of Silver Valley's new parking lot for students (screw asphalt, huh? just dump
some rocks out yonder, the kids can park on that) and went sideways and then her car went over my hand, I'm not sure.
Thank God that gravel was new because my hand went down into a depression of the gravel and while it hurt some, I was remarkably
okay. I was just there on my hands and knees, looking at my hand and believing in God.
And that's when Karen slammed on her brakes and backed up to see how badly she'd killed me. And she drove over my whole freaking
arm that time.
Rumors later from observers said that Karen had "gunned for" me in that parking lot but I don't believe it. In our school
newspaper (we were a small high school with a lot of yellow journalism...I should know, I was the newspaper copy editor) someone
was quoted as saying, "Karen saw Mouse and hit the gas, man! And she slammed Mouse sideways and then she backed up and ran
her over again! It was awesome!"
Karen cried and cried. She swore she'd meant no harm. And I believe her to this day. I think Karen did see me but just felt
angry. So she delayed her stop. That's all.
When Karen backed over me, she screamed and got out of the car. (I have seen women do this so many times: run over something
and then back over it to see what they've hit. We lost two cats in this manner, the cats survived being almost-hit only to
be killed by women who backed over them to see what they'd just run over. I have no idea what sort of warped thinking that
entails.)
Karen screamed at me that day, "Why the fuck did you run in front of my car??"
I screamed, "Why the fuck didn't you stop?"
That's why our school paper said that when she saw I was not dead, Karen tried to kill me with her bare hands.
She was not trying to kill me. Good grief. She was just shaking some sense into me. But the wrong kind of sense.
Because she said, "What the fuck, is your event over already?" and I said, "No, I ran off the track, I can't do it."
This had been our whole friendship's theme: making each other do what we felt we could not. I made her get an A in English
lit, she made me get an A in calculus. I made her try out for the flag team, she made stay on the track team even after I
realized I wasn't the bodily competitive type. (I'm mentally competitive. But not bodily.)
So Karen screamed, "You're gonna haul your scrawny ass back to that track and finish the race, goddammit!"
She was bigger than me, she was dragging me, Glen was still in the car and was later quoted as saying, "I figured Karen was
gonna kill Mouse, but what can you do? They're women. They frighten a guy when they fight."
Karen dragged me to the track and said, "Now get out there and run!"
So I did.
The wrong way.
You know, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to get a little disoriented after you've been run over twice by
your best friend.
Also I don't know why we had to run counter-clockwise around the track. Maybe some of us were clockwise thinkers, they can't
know how everyone perceives the world. And I'm left-handed, further reason to cut me some slack on the deal. Left-handers
can be directionally dyslexic. Clearly I am. And my arm was swelling rapidly.
Everything was slow motion. In my memory, it goes very slowly: seeing Coach Nesbitt throw down his clipboard and begin to
jump around like a wildly angry hedgehog. Passing my competitors as they were going the other direction and hearing one of
them say "You asshole" but it came out, in my slow-mo memory, "Y....ou...uuuu...asssssssssshoooooole" and I just kept running.
I felt that reversing my direction at that point would be cheating. Clearly I had left the track, disqualifying myself anyway.
I just wanted to finish the damned race, one way or another.
So when I crossed the finish line first but going the wrong way and having completed, all in all, approximately 0.75 laps,
I could not believe that the idiotic judge, who was reading a paperback book while everyone ran, jumped up and declared me
the winner.
At the time, the judge's decision was final. Back in those days we did not have electronic finish lines, we did not really
have justice of any sort in anything, if you ask me. But the other runners didn't fight it, maybe they were standing in for
girls with the flu, too, and that wasn't their event, either. I'll never know.
Coach Nesbitt was frantically motioning for me to take the ribbon and go.
So I did.
I carried the blue ribbon in my good hand (the other arm was swollen even worse and it hurt like hell) and trotted back to
the parking lot. Karen was leaning on her car smoking a cigarette, Glen Ross was gone, and here I came.
Karen was so shocked to see that blue ribbon that she dropped her cigarette.
"Holy fuck!" she said. "What were your competitors? Snails??" and I said, "Just drive the fucking car goddammit" and I got
in, holding my blue ribbon.
Over the years, I've morphed my memory into telling me that I was a track star in high school. And I've said it to others
as well. The mind plays odd tricks.
At the ER, the doctor congratulated me on my win and looked at my arm, he said he was at a loss to understand how I had tire
treadmarks on my arm when I was a runner but Karen said, "Really, it's irrelevant. Can you fix her?"
I had an x-ray and nothing was broken. Good thing, because it was my left arm. The arm I use for everything!
To this day, Karen will get an attack of conscience and say, "I am so sorry that I ran over you twice" and I respond, "You
are so lucky I am not dead." That probably sounded horrible at a business women's luncheon we had to attend.
I got called "Wrong-Way Mouse" for the remainder of my high school career. I got used to it, I kind of liked it. There were
only about fifty kids in my class, anyway. Let 'em tease.
Because I still have that ribbon.
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