by Barbara Poelle
This weekend I saw a 7 foot banana chase a 6 foot gorilla into a 90 foot mud pit.
And there was no vodka involved.
See, I turned thir[coughCOUGHcough] this weekend and Husband treated me to a 5K mud run upstate. It was as brutal as it was fantastic: Some finished in costumes. Most finished with bruises. All finished with mud in their ears. Full obstacle course, climbing walls, sniper crawls, etc, in uphill 5K mileage with about 1200 other people who were either in better physical shape or worse mental states than we were- as we finished about middle of the pack. We are sunburned and band-aided but we had a blast.
Husband never bats an eye when I want to do something, shall we say, left of center. When I turned twen[coughCOUGHc—oh wait, no, that one is okay] Husband got me attacked by a K9 Police Dog. It was the second best day of my whole life. (He has always been supportive in particular of any activity I do wherein you have to sign a waiver that includes the phrase “I understand that this activity is inherently dangerous …” is that something I should be worried about?)
And I’ll never forget when I was a baby agent and I had an ugly thing happen to me and I wanted to armadillo in horror and sadness. (Yes, it’s a verb. Yes, it is.) I had dropped Husband a text about my desire to beat myself to death with my own corporeal rage, and rather than soft coo’ing and empathy, I got a text in return that said, “get back in the ring you son of a bitch, cause Mickey loves ya”. It slapped the stink of failure right outta me and I was off my stool and back in the ring swinging.
Everybody has somebody who encourages, supports, and admires their intent, desire and accomplishment of being a published author. Who is yours? Sometimes it is a teacher, or an on-line friend, or a spouse, but they are truly at times the only one in our corner, because even WE can falter in our own minds. And isn’t that the best part? Having a buddy who supports you in the dog bites and snout pets of life. Today I ask you, nay, I DEMAND you call, email, text, smoke signal, carrier pigeon that person who is your Mickey before the bell. The monkey to your banana. The band-aid on the three inch gash on your calf. Tell them you appreciate that by the third mile when we are holding a handful of our own kneeskin and can’t talk around a mouthful of stomach bile, they are tra-la-la’ing alongside us as if holding a parasol and talking of memories past. Tell them that even when we spend some days wishing we had duct-taped our shoes to our feet and maybe have bugs in our teeth, we know they are there to cross the finish line with us, arms raised in victory.
Tell them thank you.
We can’t do it without them.
