Straying Lanes

Track and Field Day, four words that, on their own, I don’t mind. Who doesn’t like a nice oval “track”? The word “and” is just so convenient, joining things like burgers and fries, rock and roll, bubble test and brainwashing. A “field” is the perfect place for flowers or landmines (depending on your worldview). And “day”… if you’re going to rock and roll all night, you’re gonna need a place to party. But put them together and you get the annual Harris Middle School event that equals sitting in the sun. On a hard metal bleacher. For sixteen hours (that’s my approximation). Interrupted by periodic bursts of running.

“Hey Donny,” Grimey said, smiling as he walked up to where I sat, already beginning to toast.

Grimey had his guitar strapped across his back. The one shining moment of the day was that as part of the opening ceremony Grimey would be playing a solo after the National Anthem.

“I don’t know if I’m more impressed that you got Ms. Fletcher to agree to let you play in the first place, or that she agreed to let you jam out some ‘Welcome to the Jungle’,” I said, returning his smile.

Grimey pulled the guitar around to the front and ran his fingers lightly over the strings, “Just because she is the principal doesn’t mean she don’t like hearing a little Guns and Roses.”

It’s not that Grimey and I were out of shape or didn’t enjoy a little athletic competition. In fact, according to the secret gambling odds board in the teachers’ lounge, Grimey was the 5 to 1 favorite to take the 1600 meter race and I was 10 to 1 to win the 100 meter sprint. Interestingly, there were 2 to 1 odds that Mr. Jowls would win the “most kids sent away crying” competition.

Our biggest complaint was that being at an all day event took us away from our self-prescribed schedule of spending the last two periods of the day in the “Bat Cave”. Grimey finally conceded to calling our workshop slash studio the Bat Cave after I promised I wouldn’t tell Ella that it was him who had carved a “sm” in front of her name on her bowling plaque in the trophy case.

We were both excited to finish a video project we were working on, and this one-day delay really threw our schedule off. If there is one thing Grimey does almost as well as playing the guitar, its video production. We were submitting a video to a website contest called “The Ultimate Middle School Survival Video”. Most of it we just improvised as we filmed (that’s where our best stuff usually comes from).

Grimey was close to pulling it all together. At this point in the process, Grimey was doing all the hard work for the video and I was just sitting back watching over his shoulder and humming out the tune to Tom Petty’s “The Waiting is the Hardest Part”. That usually gets on his nerves, so I get the look and quit.

The entire school stands for the National Anthem and Pledge of Allegiance. I always get goosebumps when I see Old Glory flying proudly. Partly because my dad is deployed to Afghanistan right now with his Marine unit, and partly because I know I will one day probably join him as a member of some branch of the military. Grimey tells me he thinks I would be better suited working for the CIA or some agency that covers up conspiracies.

As everyone settles back down onto the bleachers a dominating chord blast jolts out from Grimey’s amplifiers. Everyone is back on their feet ready to rock out. At the end, Grimey manages to sneak in a little “Smoke on the Water” before Ms. Fletcher gets him shooed off the stage and turns the mike over to Coach D.

Coach blows his whistle right into the microphone to get our attention. The problem is now everyone’s ears are ringing so badly that we can’t understand what he has started talking about. By the time my hearing clears up, I hear Coach saying that there is a new twist to this year’s events.

“The students who win first place in any of the overall events will receive a one-month pass from PE class,” Coach D bellows, “this pass will allow you to be excused from the gym and you will have a free period.”

As this starts to sink in I see Grimey coming back up the bleachers nodding because I know he is thinking the same thing. With one more free period added to the other two, that could be just the thing we need to get the video finished and some of our projects that are on the backburner started up.

Grimey sits down. “Ok, now I have some motivation,” he says, “Do we have any plans that might give us a leg up on the competition?”

The crowd is really buzzing because now everyone is already envisioning that pass in their hands. Some are picturing the nap they could take, surfing the net in the computer lab, extra time to study, or finally getting that air hockey table set up (that would be just Grimey and me).

“Nothing we have the materials on hand to do, everything is locked up over in the Cave,” I reply.

“No chance that we can get out of here, look over at the exit gate,” Grimey says, glancing over to where Mrs. Goodall stands guard.

Oddly, out of the 500 kids sitting in the bleachers she is staring straight at us. She is a hawk and the two of us are prairie dogs; she is just waiting for us to pop up out of our hole to swoop in on us.

“She knows we are planning something,” I groaned.

“That woman is a little too uncanny for a teacher, just like Mr. Jowls,” Grimey says, “I guess we just win it the old fashioned way.”

“Yep,” I agree, “this one is going to be on a wing and a prayer.”

The day keeps burning away and Grimey and I each keep reporting down to the track to run in the preliminary heats. To qualify for an event’s final race, you have to post a time in the top eight.

Grimey posted the fastest qualifying time in the 1600 meters. Grimey is kind of an anomaly because of the fact that he runs barefooted. Coach D almost didn’t let him race in the first heat he was scheduled for. In the end, Coach’s curiosity won out and he let Grimey go sans shoes. His competition in the first races underestimated the benefits of running barefoot, which threw them for a loop as they watched him pull away. Grimey had taken a Sharpie and wrote a message on the bottoms of his bare feet. His left foot said “Running barefoot: so easy” and the right read “a caveman could do it”. Most people, it turns out, have a hard time running while trying to read.

I, on the other hand, had a little more of a struggle in the 100 meter dash. I qualified for the finals by placing fifth overall. I realized that eating eight slices of pizza, three orders of nachos, and washing all down with four Mountain Dews, as Grimey had told me, was not a good combination with the sun and the run.

The 100 meter dash finals were announced and I stood up to report down to the track. Grimey gave me a slap on the back which resulted in a nasty belcher. The closer I got to the starting line the more my stomach gurgled and lurched. Coach D threw me a sideways glance and I thought I heard him say “looks greener than a frog in the grass on Saint Patrick’s Day” to the teacher standing beside him.

I got lined up along with the other seven competitors and thought, “this is it Donny, you’re going all in on this one.”

The gun fired, and I was off like a bolt of lightning. The lead was all mine and with only 25 meters to go I knew I had this. That is until I focused just past the finish line to see Mr. Jowls staring at me and holding out a slice of pizza in his fist, squeezing every ounce of grease out of it. My stomach bounces, shoots up, curves left, drops, grinds, and does a 360 spin. I stray out of my lane to the grass where it is apparent to the world what I indulged in that day. As I finish feeding the grass I look over to see Mr. Jowls smile as a lone tear rolls down my face.

“Tough break,” Grimey tells me as I hobble back up the bleachers. “What happened? You practically had that PE pass in your hands.”

“Something strange is going on,” was all I could mumble back.

Three more final events passed and Grimey got the call down for his race. Grimey seemed relaxed and loose as he lined up. The gun fired and all eight racers were off and running. The first two laps around the track, the entire group was pretty bunched up. However, halfway through the third lap, three people had pulled well ahead. Grimey was ahead of the other two runners by 10 meters. Coming around the final turn of the fourth and final lap, Grimey had opened up about a 25 meter lead. As he closed in on the finish line, I saw his head start to jerk around and he began straying out of his lane and heading straight for the grass inside the track. As his foot came down off the track he took a big spill into the grass. Grimey tried to recover and get back in the race, but third place was all he was going to get.

Looking defeated and a little upset Grimey plopped down on the bench beside me.

I echoed Grimey’s earlier sentiment to me, “What happened? You had that won.”

Grimey scratched his head and said, “It was really weird. As I was closing in on the finish line, I looked past the line and saw Jowls standing just behind it. The light was reflecting off the big watch he wears and it totally blinded me.”

A thought flared in my mind.

“As I crossed the finish line my eyes were still watering from that reflection I was blasted with,” Grimey continued. “Mr. Jewell came over and slapped me on my shoulder and told me ‘don’t cry kid, those are the breaks’, I started to tell him I wasn’t crying, but he was already gone.”

After I shared my theory with Grimey we set off in search of Jowls. As we came around the corner of the concession stand we stopped dead in our tracks. Walking away from a circle of about ten teachers was Mr. Jowls whistling and holding a huge stack of money.