songs of experience

I am giving a talk today to the UNC track club (versus track team … two separate entities … the club being a group that would welcome wisdom from an outside source; the other, well, let’s just say I’ve never been invited back for the, er, family reunions). I’ve been pondering what I might say to a group of 20-something club runners, some of whom are helping out with my youth Pacers running club. I really have nothing in common with 20 year-olds - an age in my own life filled with too much angst, too much self, and too much too much. Too TOO, as my middle daughter once said. Were I to repeat my 20’s - as some sort of Karmic punishment by a vengeful God - I might not make it out.

So, this morning when the mother of a now-grown Pacer handed me a plastic bag filled with - what’s this?! - an old jumpsuit of mine from the Olympic team uniform kit that I had given out for a Pacer prize ten years ago, I knew the perfect “prop” had fallen in my lap. You should see this thing. It’s one part astronaut suit, one part ghostbusters outfit, one part bee-keepers get-up. I look a bit like Elvis Junior, the blonde version, in it. It is so ridiculous looking that I plan to wear it to my talk this afternoon, all zipped up and serious.

Those hip UNC kids are going to think I’m some freak stuck in the past - re-living my glory days. I will set them up with stories of “The Olympics” and my life as a professional runner … then, in dramatic fashion, I will unzip the zoot suit and say I am finished with all that. In a Saint Paul-like moment, I will rid myself of the “old garment” (the old self) and don the new. Underneath the suit will be … jeans, a Pacer tee-shirt, work boots, car keys. More props to show the common (better? humbler?) less selfish life one grows into after spending two decades chasing an individual dream.

The details are all very nebulous right now, but I assure you The Unveiling talk will be a winner.