Archive | August, 2012

In Solidarity with the 22 Former Juventino Employees

30 Aug

I have been mulling over a number of posts this past week or so.  Mostly they are in draft form, requiring the kind of editing that I tend to be too lazy and too attached to specific sentences to really undertake.  I suppose it’s the difference I find between writing about a personal experience, or an issue that I have personal experience with, and those things I feel very strongly about but maybe don’t feel entirely qualified weighing in on.  It’s mostly a fear of misrepresenting an issue, coming across as an enemy rather than an ally due to a poor choice of words, or inadvertently insulting someone I care about because I lack the depth of knowledge I really need to adequately express myself.  My post on Chik-Fil-A met this fate, abandoned to draft status after being alerted by my wonderful sometimes-reviewer that one of my paragraphs could potentially be misread by someone who doesn’t know me and my liberal social leanings.  The topic today, however, does not fall under that category.  It is something I know very well indeed.

While perusing Jezebel this morning, I came across this article written about sexual harassment in the service industry.  (The complainants have a blog which you should check out.  Hopefully more hits will let them know they are supported.)  As I have written here before, I am a bartender and have been for the past number of years.  Ever since my senior year in college, when I was 21 years old, I have been working some sort of food-service job.  I was a barista, a hostess, a server, a cocktail waitress, a reservationist, a bartender, not necessarily in that order.  I have done it all.  Over the years I have come across all types of sexual harassment, usually at the hands of patrons, but occasionally by bosses and coworkers.  One specific instance I remember occurred when I was in my early 20’s working as a server at a crappy Irish pub in the West Village.  I was working 6 days a week — 5 nights and one lunch shift — for a man who, for lack of a better description, totally sucked.  He lived in Bay Ridge and had the entire restaurant outfitted with cameras that live-streamed to his television set at home.  He and his family would watch the non-events of the restaurant unfold while eating dinner.  We got admonished for wearing sweatshirts over our tops during a particularly chilly week and there were rumors that the wife and kids watched one of the male bartenders (women were not allowed behind the stick) change clothes in the basement.  I regularly came into work paranoid, afraid that an errant coffee ground would send my boss into an unreasonable abuse-session where he wouldn’t fire me, but would certainly point out my lack of intelligence and poor work ethic, making me aware that I was lucky he wasn’t sending me packing.  He, however, knew how to keep his hands to himself.  One of the bartenders — different from the downstairs changer, he was a standup dude — did not.  One instance during my weekly lunch shift I went to the end of the bar to get some sodas for my first table.  The bartender on shift slapped my ass to get my attention and when I turned around he shoved me against the wall, out of view of the cameras but not of the 5 men sitting at the bar, and kissed me, tongue and all.  I turned bright red and stormed off to calm myself down, chalking it all up to “industry culture.”  The men at the bar hooted and hollered.  The bartender was about 15 years my senior and expecting his first child.  After the attack, he routinely sent me text messages requesting we play a game of strip poker at my house.  I never reported the harassment to anyone.

As any regular reader of my blog knows, I am not one to keep quiet about harassment.  Currently, I work at a bar with incredibly supportive bosses who would (a) never behave in a manner such as Juventino Avila has been accused of and (b) are supportive of me when I call a customer out on inappropriate behavior.  It is a luxury in this industry to work in such an environment and I feel incredibly lucky.  That being said, the industry as a whole needs to change.  Inappropriate touching and comments should not be allowed and employees should be better protected when voicing complaints about the behavior of employers and coworkers.  The 22 former Juventino employees who wrote this blog should be commended for coming forward.  It’s a much overdue step towards acknowledging and challenging the overwhelming belief that sexual harassment is an inevitable, and acceptable, aspect of the industry.  I only hope their complaints get the attention they deserve and that residents of Park Slope and beyond hold Juventino Avila accountable for his abhorrent behavior and withhold their business from his establishment.  I know I won’t be eating there.

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On Todd Akin, this time with a little more anger

21 Aug

Okay.  So, as I wrote yesterday, I was done talking about the Todd Akin thing.  At that moment.  Well, that moment has passed and my anger has been renewed.  Partially that anger was renewed by reading Eve Ensler’s amazing post from yesterday on Huffington Post.  If you haven’t yet read it, get on it now.  It is so worth it.  It is worth it for so many reasons.  Here is one:

You used the expression “legitimate” rape as if to imply there were such a thing as “illegitimate” rape. Let me try to explain to you what that does to the minds, hearts and souls of the millions of women on this planet who experience rape. It is a form of re-rape. The underlying assumption of your statement is that women and their experiences are not to be trusted. That their understanding of rape must be qualified by some higher, wiser authority. It delegitimizes and undermines and belittles the horror, invasion, desecration they experienced. It makes them feel as alone and powerless as they did at the moment of rape.

And then there’s this:

Were you implying that women and their bodies are somehow responsible for rejecting legitimate rape sperm, once again putting the onus on us?

And this:

Why don’t you spend your time ending rape rather than redefining it? Spend your energy going after those perpetrators who so easily destroy women rather than parsing out manipulative language that minimizes their destruction.

And so much more in between.  She says all the things that I could never articulate.  That it would take me a few days to really come to.  My initial reaction to his “gaffe” was an exasperated exhale, a violent roll of the eyes, and the need to slowly and methodically rub vertically between my hairline and the bridge of my nose, a habit I have developed in recent years at times of intense frustration.  I swear one of these days I am going to rub right through to my skull.  My initial reaction was full of disgust, but I honestly don’t think I fully realized the deep-rootedness of the issue associated with Todd Akin’s comments.  He was idiotic, sure, we all think that’s the case. Even Shawn Hannity thinks he should withdraw himself from the Missouri Senate race.  But the thing is, it’s not because many of these people disagree with what Akin said.  They disagree with the way that Akin said it.

Meanwhile, in Texas, a court of appeals ruled today that the state can withhold funding from Planned Parenthood clinics before the original case, in which Planned Parenthood sued the state of Texas for a law that violates their freedom of speech, goes to court in October.  (For a more eloquent and less confusing explanation of the pending litigation, read this Times article.)  These clinics provide health care for low income women for things from regular gynecological exams to cancer screenings, from maternal health care to contraception.  And yes, abortion services.  It is important to note, however, that no state or federal funds go to finance abortions.  They go towards helping poor women with no or insufficient health insurance obtain access to quality, and essential, services.  As Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, said, this case

has never been about Planned Parenthood — it’s about the women who rely on Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings, birth control and well-woman exams.

The reason I bring this up is that issues like the one in Texas have been cropping up with alarming regularity.  Todd Akin is not alone.  He has many, many people who agree with him.  Many people who think that women don’t know how to make decisions about their own bodies.  Many people who think that women cavalierly make the decision to have an abortion.  Many people who think that women will scream rape to obtain an abortion in places where rape, incest and the health of the mother are the only exceptions to an all out ban on abortion.  Don’t believe me?  Just watch this video of Eric Turner of Indiana.  As I said, Todd Akin is not alone and his ignorant statement was not an isolated opinion.  Let us use this moment of anger, and hurt, and disbelief to blow the roof off the party who, just today, the same day they were calling for Todd Akin to step aside, approved a party plank that would strive to outlaw abortion without any mention of exceptions for rape or incest.  This is our time, ladies and allies.  We are too smart for this and there is too much at stake.  We need to hold the Republican party accountable not only for the statements of Todd Akin, but for those of many others.  And, more important still, we need to hold them accountable for the anti-woman legislation they unceasingly push on us.  As Eve Ensler rightfully said,

I am asking you and the GOP to get out of my body, out of my vagina, my womb, to get out of all of our bodies. These are not your decisions to make. These are not your words to define.

Yes.

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On Todd Akin and Other (Unrelated) Things

20 Aug

This blog is going to be about the following three things.  First, I would like to share with you all a search term that led a potential reader to my blog that I found both funny and sort of infuriating.  Second, Todd Akin.  And third, a quote that  I read in The New Yorker this past issue that I found especially interesting.  I really think that if you don’t feel like hearing my rant on Akin, you should just skip down to the quote at the bottom, labeled “Part III: The Quote” for your convenience.  Also, there is no reason behind the order of the post.  It’s just how I felt like doing it.

Part I:  The Search Term

Okay, so if any of you read my post from yesterday, you will understand my astonishment when I went to look at my site stats to figure out what kinds of search terms are getting people to my blog and one of them read

up skirt shots reddit

Ugh.  Really?  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I will hope that this person was (a) looking for an article about how awful this specific SubReddit is or (b) was actually looking for the SubReddit but upon reading my blog post decided to forgo looking at unauthorized and demeaning pictures of women and girls and become a decent human being.  I highly doubt either of those things to be actual possibilities but, hey, a girl can dream!

Part II:  The Idiot

Now I am going to weigh in, ever so slightly, on Todd Akin.  So, for those of you who have been living under a rock, the 6-term, Tea Party-backed congressman from Missouri said the following thing yesterday, as quoted in a New York Times article:

If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.

He then quickly claimed to have “misspoke” and tried to make it better by saying this:

In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview, and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year.  I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life, and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action.

He has empathy for women who are victims of violent crime yet he has no empathy for women who find themselves pregnant by their rapists because that would be victimizing an unborn child.  You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Akin.  And, misspoke?  Is that the best he could do?  The thing is, that Mr. Akin is not the first person to make a remark like this.  Statements just like his have been made in the past by Pennsylvania Representative Stephen Freind, North Carolina Representative Henry Aldridge, Dr. John C. Willke, and Arkansas politician Fay Boozman who was, at one time, the director of the health department in Arkansas.  I really want to just be like, “wow, how stupid can you get?” and move along with my day but then I realize that these people are in actual positions of power and they, as well as some of the people who listen to them, actually think they are speaking the truth even though once they realize how bad it sounds they try as hard as they can to pretend they didn’t mean it.  (I swear, if I ever read somewhere that some asshat rapist tries to deny paternity of a child by saying that due to a women’s natural trauma-secretions the baby in question can’t possibly be his I will have a full on fit.)

Here’s the thing that’s really scary about it.  After Akin “misspoke,” Republicans and Democrats alike could not distance themselves from him faster.  Everyone across the board saw this specific statement as heartless and horrifying.  Romney told the National Review,

Congressman Akin’s comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong.  Like millions of other Americans, we (he and Paul Ryan) found them to be offensive.  I have an entirely different view…What he said is entirely without merit and he should correct it.

How do you correct something like that??  As Meg Ryan said in When Harry Met Sally, “You can’t take it back.  It’s already out there!”  The thing is, as pointed out in this Huffington Post article, Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan actually doesn’t hold opinions that far off from Akin, he just knows how to package his beliefs in a less infuriating, less “out there,” way.  According to Michael B. Keegan of HuffPost,

Rep. Paul Ryan not only opposes abortion rights for rape victims, he was a cosponsor of a so-called “personhood” amendment that would have classified abortion as first degree murder and outlawed common types of birth control. Ryan has also bought into the “legitimate rape” nonsense, cosponsoring legislation with Akin that would have limited federal services to victims of “forcible rape” — a deliberate attempt to write out some victims of date rape and statutory rape.

So there’s that.  Also, Romney claims that he is not opposed to abortion in cases of rape, but if he is elected president he will work to overturn Roe v. Wade, putting decisions about abortion in the hands of individual states.  It seems that therefore, he is giving individual states the ability to make all forms of abortion illegal, regardless of circumstance.  If that’s the case, then when states make a decision about, say, abortion in cases of rape there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it if he did disagree with the state which, at least in this current iteration of Romney, he supposedly does.  And, unless he’s really stupid which I don’t think he is, he is well aware of that fact.  It’s great that people are getting all up in arms about this because what Akin said really was demeaning and insulting and wrong and all manner of other things.  But the thing is, I don’t see a huge distinction between the shitty science that Akin and company have referred to and some of the studies and statistics I hear Republicans site to justify their anti-choice stances.  Also, in a lot of these cases when politicians and pundits and whoever else make statements about the rights of the unborn child, they are immediately discounting the rights of the woman.  We cease being human beings and instead become vessels for the unborn.  Akin is an idiot, but sadly he is not even close to alone in his beliefs.  Okay.  Moving on (for now).

Part III:  The Quote

In the August 13th and August 20th edition of The New Yorker there was an article by Adam Gopnic called “I, Nephi:  Mormonism and its Meanings.”  It was a review of 4 books that have been published in recent months that was spawned, I would imagine, by the fact that Mitt Romney is Mormon and a lot of people find Mormonism baffling. I have to admit at this point that I didn’t read the entire article because, although I consider myself a curious person, I am not currently terribly curious about Mormonism.  I did, however, come across this quote that I found interesting and figured I would share with you all.

…almost every American religion sooner or later becomes a Gospel of Wealth….The astonishing thing…is that this gospel of prosperity is the one American faith that will never fail, even when its promises seem ruined.  Elsewhere among the Western democracies, the bursting of the last bubble has led to doubts about the system that blows them.  Here the people who seem likely to inherit power are those who want to blow still bigger ones, who believe in the bubble even after is has burst, and who hold its perfection as a faith so gleaming and secure and unbreakable that it might once have been written down somewhere by angels, on solid-gold plates.

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Peeping Toms

19 Aug

It’s 12:30am on a Saturday night.  I am telling you that for two reasons.  First, I am not at my best late at night, blog writing included.  And second, like every other weekend for the past 3 years and for the foreseeable future, I worked all day today and tomorrow I have another full day of tending to my adoring public. Therefore, Saturday is generally a pretty low key night for me.  Being tired and/or hungover at work generally makes for a less than enjoyable bartending shift.  So why, you might ask, am I awake right now?  Why am I sitting on my sofa typing this rather than lying in bed, staring at the inside of my eyeballs? Well, I’ll tell you.  Are you sitting down because this might seem a bit of a shock.  It’s because I am stewing.  Surprise!

Here’s what happened.  After working all day I came home to have a nice relaxing evening involving a bit of ice cream (AKA a stomachache waiting to happen) and watch some mindless television, enter Law and Order SVU.  I achieved all of those things, stomachache included, and decided to cap off my raucous evening with a game of suduko on my cell phone.  I changed into my pajamas.  I sat down on my bed.  My bed, as it happens, is against a wall with a window.  The window is right next to my pillows.  So there I am, on my bed, minding my own business when I hear, yelled from across the way,

You’re really sexy, baby!

I look over at the window in disbelief.  That couldn’t have been directed at me.  Fuck, I didn’t put down the blinds.  Fuck, that dickwad who always plays his shitty ass music at ridiculous volumes is home, entertaining friends and playing his shitty ass music at ridiculous volumes.  And his blinds are up.  And my bedside lamp is on.  And it’s dark outside.  Fantastic.  There is nothing quite like having someone harass you when you are in your own bedroom and on your own bed.  I mean, really?  I don’t know.  Maybe I should thank him.  Thank him for reminding me that people are gross and that I should be more militant about closing my blinds when I am in my bedroom at night lest someone creep me or, worse yet, take a photo of me and post it on the internet along with all those other photos of unsuspecting girls that are popping up in Photobucket and Reddit subthreads.  It’s a real problem, you know.  I mean, really, it’s gotten to the point where I am actually nervous about wearing skirts and dresses in this city because some perv might be walking behind me up the stairs and sneak an up-the-skirt shot and post it online for all his pervy buddies to look at.  And the thing is, it’s not like if that happened I would even know about it.*  What am I going to do, spend all my time online, image searching for photos of my underwear that may or may not exist?  By the way I have totally done that before.

There was this one time a few years ago when I was in the shower and I swear to you I saw a camera flash go off in the window across the way.  Out of the corner of my eye.  I thought about the height of my breasts relative to the height of the window and, while frantically trying to cover myself up, analyzed whether or not it was possible for the photographer to (a) get an angle of anything other than my face and neck, which, by the way, would be creepy enough and (b) to make anything out through the very steamed-up window.  And then, after I hastily jumped out of the shower and measured for a curtain (we ended up covering the window with a ratty t-shirt for quite some time) I looked online to see if photos of me had surfaced.  I don’t really want to go into what my search terms delivered to my computer screen.  I gave up after the first set of hits came back.  So there may or may not legitimately be photos of me showering on the internet which intermittently gives me the heebie-jeebies and also bursts of intense anger on a semi-regular basis.

I know that both these incidents have the common denominator of me forgetting to close my blinds.  I get it.  I will take full responsibility for my carelessness on that front.  But the thing is that in my house is the one time when I really let my guard down.  I come home from runs during which people whistle at me and catcall me.  I walk past construction sites.  I get hit on or threatened when I am at work.  I get spit on.  I choose my wardrobe based off what will make me feel the least victimized while I am going to the bank and getting my morning coffee.  And I actually worry, every time I walk up the stairs, feel my shirt go up in the back when I sit on a chair, notice the wind from the subway slightly moving the bottom of my skirt, that someone is looking and maybe snapping a photo.  My house, and specifically my bedroom, is the one place where I stop worrying.  But that’s silly.  It’s not safe here either.

*Let it be known that if I ever catch someone taking an up-the-skirt shot of me I will push that person down the stairs.

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My No Good, Very Bad (Fluid Filled) Day

13 Aug

Is that blog title a copyright infringement?  I kind of feel like no because it is only a small portion of the title of the kids book but I also kind of think I am only saying that to make myself feel a little less like Fareed Zakaria.  If you have any insight or opinions, kindly leave them in the comment section below.  Thanks.

And now, on to the blog post!  As I have done before, I would like to preface the actual telling of this tale by saying that if you think girls are made of raw cookie dough and scotch, you probably should skip this post.  I refuse to feel badly for the men-folk out there who read this post despite my warnings and then complain to me about how they wished they hadn’t read it.  It’s happened before.  You know who you are and you have been warned.  Very well.

So yesterday before 2pm, about 1/4 of the way through my bartending shift, was a really shitty day.  Like epically, epically shitty.  Nobody died or anything so don’t go getting that idea.  It was just one of those days where nothing of consequence really happens but all of the non-events just generally blow.  It all started at 12am the night before when I decided to go to sleep rather than watching an episode of Friday Night Lights with my boyfriend.  I was trying to be responsible.  So, I got myself all ready and got into bed.  Generally, I am a very good sleeper.  One game (or part of a game, let’s be honest) of sudoku and I am sleeping like a baby.  But not that night.  I played a game, then another, and another.  Midnight turned to 1am…2am…3am.  I listened to my kittys running around the room with one of their favorite toys:  a wrapped straw.  I got annoyed at the noise it was making, got up, and hurled it down the hallway.  They brought it back and continued with their game.  At some point, I fell asleep.  And then, at 8:30, I awoke with a start.  Wide awake!  So, I went down the hallway to the bathroom to discover the thing that every woman hates to discover first thing in the morning.  Leakage.  God damnit.  Well, that’s okay.  Actually, looking back, I didn’t feel like it was okay in the moment, to be entirely honest.  I looked in the mirror to see an angry Rebekah staring back at me.  A Rebekah who wanted to rip her ovaries and uterus out of her body and then get back into bed and sleep soundly, and cleanly, for the next 10 days.  I decided instead to seize the moment and do the thing I had been putting off all week — I would wash my hair!  For those who know me, I have incredibly thick hair practically down to my ass so washing it is really nothing to sneeze at.  Afterwards, I felt much better.  I started packing for my upcoming trip to visit my Aunts in Pennsylvania.  I decided it wise to pack my back-up running shoes instead of my actual running shoes for a myriad reasons that I don’t feel it necessary to go into at this time.  I went over to the line of shoes outside my bedroom door, picked up my back-up pair and…what is that smell?  Ew!  What’s running down my arm?!  CAT PEE!  I stood there in disgust and disbelief, called to my boyfriend who was in the room presumably playing a game of backgammon on his phone.

Peeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeete?  Will you come out here for a sec…?

I was trying to sound relaxed but I imagine there was a serious degree of panic and murderous rage in my voice.  I can only imagine the face he opened the door to.  The next 10 minutes saw me and Pete with bleach and paper towels, him calmly cleaning, me angrily cleaning and cursing the kittys at every opportunity.  It sounded something like this.

Me:  Stupid kittys.  Why do they do this?  No one else’s kittys ever pee on things.  Carrie’s kitty, she doesn’t pee.

Pete:  Actually, I’m pretty sure Carrie said she has gotten pretty adept at cleaning cat pee smell out of laundry, so…

Me:  (Stewing in silence at being proven wrong.)  Well, whatever.  These ones are the worst.  Why do they have to be such assholes?  Right now I hate them so much I wish we never got them.*  Ew!  Ew!  A drip!  Oh god.

Once the cleaning was complete, and I had sufficiently scoured my arm so I felt about 75% as clean as I did when I got out of the shower, Pete and I headed off, with packed bag in tow, to the bar.  Going to a bar job when you are already in a bad mood and having a bad day is not something for the faint of heart.  But I persevered (in all honesty, I didn’t have much of a choice).  One of my customers ordered a Chelsea Hop Angel.  It immediately kicked.  Had to run down and change it.  Ten minutes later, someone else ordered the Kelso Pils.  It kicked.  Had to run down and change it.  Then the same fool who ordered the Chelsea Hop Angel ordered his fourth Brooklyn Lager and, wouldn’t you know it?  It kicked.  Had to run down and change it.  By this point I was so frustrated that I was storming around the walk-in fridge imagining that I was hearing a strange humming and that something in there might explode at any moment and wouldn’t that just figure?  I went to change the third and, as it turned out, final keg of the day and, in my haste to avoid death or dismemberment by walk-in fridge disaster, I didn’t put the sankey in properly and BOOM!  Beer geyser!  It was everywhere, but mostly it was everywhere on me.  Dripping down my face.  Stinking-up my hair.  Soaking into my clothes.  I was dripping and I was furious.  I stormed upstairs and stomped into the bathroom, likely alarming my few customers on the way through.  I took a quick sink-shower, praising myself for the choice to go make-up free at work that day.  No running mascara for this girl!  I went back behind the bar and begrudgingly served the offending beer to my normally-offensive sometimes customer.  Even he knew to keep his mouth shut (actually…he knew after I told him talking to me was probably not in his best interest at that particular moment.  Whoops).

Then, 2pm came around and as fast as the bad day started it came to a grinding halt.  I ate some snacks.  I threw some darts (4 bulls!).  I made some money.  And then I headed back to New Jersey for the first leg of my vacation.  And that’s where I sit right now.  At my grandpa’s old desk, looking forward to the week and hoping that I am a few good laughs away from my crappy day.

*I would like to say at this juncture that this is a sentence that leaves my mouth every now and again.  Truth is, I love the kittys.  I think they are the cutest kittys in the world and if you let me I will show you a picture of Grete in a bag.  I just wish they wouldn’t piss on my things.

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Running in a Type A City

6 Aug

One of the things about New York is that we have the best of the best here.  I’m not saying that we have all the best people in the world but that, in almost any walk  of life, any academic or athletic pursuit, basically anything at all, we have some highly talented people and, unless you know someone or are really good at whatever it is you do, you will have a hard time competing.  For an example just look at our women’s roller derby team, The Gotham Girls, who routinely trounce all their competition.  As a person who considers herself to be more or less average — although I did just manage to accomplish a feat I never thought possible:  I cut my forearm on a not-very-sharp table corner because I was mindlessly leaning on it while reading pointless articles about women’s gymnastics on the internet rather than working on my thesis — New York could, potentially, be frustrating and disheartening.  Luckily for me, I am not Type A.  Not even close.  I am a steady-goes it, low-stress, often-running-late kind of a gal.  And, honestly, I like it that way.  What I do not like, however, is when my blissful Type B day gets invaded by some Type A nutjob in running shorts.  And now, story time.

This morning I did what I do most mornings (or afternoons, depending on the amount of farting around I engage in):  I laced up my running shoes.  I then proceeded to waste about 1/2 hour, meandering around the house, complaining to no one in particular about how hungry I was.  Once that ritual was completed, I headed out the door for my loop around the park.*  Up I went, following my normal path.  Over and up, over and up.  I got onto the main running road and assumed my slower-than-normal pace because, due to my new and theoretically better plan which is explained in the below asterisked portion of the post, I have become significantly less fit.  No matter.  At some point either approaching or ascending The Big Hill I came upon a man in his mid-60’s.  I approached him from behind, breathing more heavily than normal, and assumed I would just cruise by him.  But no.  He sped up.  I hate when people do that.  Whatever.  I didn’t let it bother me.  At the top of The Big Hill I decided to give the man some space so my running experience wouldn’t be negatively impacted.  I pulled over next to a tree to stretch.  I was joined, moments later, by a friendly speed-walker who, when I greeted her, dazzled me with a thick accent reserved for Jewish people born and raised in New York City.  We chatted for a minute or two, I wished her a good walk and carried on.  Not too much later I caught back up with the older man.  Clearly, he had fallen off the pace he had earlier assumed in order to not allow me to easily pass him on The Big Hill.  I chuckled to myself.  As I approached him for the second time that day he did the thing I hoped he wouldn’t do but which I knew deep down he absolutely would do:  he sped up.  Ugh.  Annoying.  As we covered the final .8 miles of the park loop, the man kept slowing down to the point where I’d come up over his left shoulder and then, when his Type A Spidey Sense alerted him he was about to be caught and passed by a girl with boobs and hair, he sped up again.  So I decided to do what any normal person would do:  I controlled my breathing and pushed the pace because you know what?  If he is going to get all competitive and annoying and take the fun out of my run, then I am going to make him want to vomit by forcing him to run faster than he is comfortable doing.  So, slowly but surely I continued to speed up.  He followed suit.  When I came up to the final 100 meters of the run, more or less, I decided to do what I often do, sprint to the finish and, wouldn’t you know it, he started racing me.  I mean, really?  Rather than stew in sweaty silence I called out to him

Is it really that important to out sprint me?  Do you feel good now?  Thanks for ruining my run, jerk.

He looked over his shoulder with a scowl that expressed anger, embarrassment, and shock.  I had called him out on his poor Type A behavior and he was not happy about it.  I ran home, feeling less cleansed than usual from my running experience.  Damnit.

But seriously, this sort of thing happens all the time and, I would like to point out, the annoying party is always male.  Always.  Never do women seem insulted by being passed by a runner who is (A) faster (B) having a random really awesome running day or (C) doing some sort of a tempo run.  So I want to say to all you Type A runners out there, please leave me be.  I am out there running not to be faster than everyone else in the park, but to have fun and clear my mind.  Running is the one hobby in my life that has been a constant for me.  I have picked up and dropped so many other activities — trumpet, tennis, gymnastics — but, for whatever reason, this is the one that has stuck. I love it because I can do it in my own time and on my own schedule.  I love it because it’s something that I do just for me, not to be better than anyone else, not for bragging rights, just for my own happiness.  And I love it because it allows me a small bit of time to be outdoors without a huge, heavy shoulder bag, more or less alone.  So please, please, if you see me running, don’t try and out run me.  Don’t try to prove to me that you’re faster.  Honestly, I could care less.  All I ask is that you let me continue, unchallenged, doing what I love doing.  Just let me run.

And one last thing.  Get a life.

*Recently I decided that I would try and run just one loop around the park, about 5 1/2-5 3/4 miles, 6 days a week rather than put pressure on myself to run more miles slightly less often, thereby lessening the pressure quotient and making running more fun.  Pressure takes the fun out of things for me.  The problem, however, is now I have put pressure on myself to run 6 days a week, which effectively dissuades me from actually running those 6 days, resulting in less weekly mileage and more difficult (read: less enjoyable) sometimes-daily runs.  I think I need a new, pressure and commitment free, plan.

 

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