A Brief Story About Someone Without a Clue

At sunrise it’s now freezing outside and there’s a fine layer of frost and ice on everything, so we have the heater kick on when the house gets below sixty-two degrees. That’s plenty warm enough but this morning it felt warmer. I lay in bed half-awake because the heater didn’t seem to want to stop and the morning air was getting downright comfortable, which is bad for sleeping.

Suddenly I heard music. I looked at the clock. It was seven-thirty.

“Kid’s up early,” said I.

“That’s not us,” said she.

I got up and opened the door to the hallway. Silence. I went to the back porch and opened that door. Huey Lewis and the News came blasting over the trees at the top of the hill. Not from the Noor Center. Not from the two little old ladies who keep donkeys. Somewhere out of sight over the row of dying redwood trees.

“Well, fuck that,” said I and got dressed. Some bored punk had decided to blast his radio before eight on a Sunday. I was going to find him. I went outside and scraped the ice off my windshield and drove up the road with the window down so I could home in on the source.

Half a block away is an east-west avenue that feeds the larger boulevards. When I got over the rise to the intersection, it was blocked off and lined with people waving flags and cowbells. Down the center, folks of all ages, hues, sexes and states of fitness streamed past in running togs with numbers stapled to their chests. Down the street the music was blaring and cheerleaders were cheering, and across the way couples sat in lawn chairs sipping coffee and yelling encouragement. One of them stared at me, amused at my dropped jaw and bed-tousled hair.

I’ve lived in this house for seven years and the previous one for nine. Both are just a long home run from that avenue. What I want to know is, how, the first Sunday of each December of each of those sixteen years, did I miss the running down this avenue of the California International Marathon?

And it looked like fun. Most of the route is a nice run. It starts just a few miles from home and ends up at the State Capitol. Next year I’m just going to have to find someone who wants to do it – there’s no doubt I know someone somewhere in that long crowd – and go do it too. Or part of it. What the hell.

UPDATE: I text-searched the archive and found I wrote about it two years ago when I had that other blog. Seems I've reached the age where lapses in memory of this sort are so common as to be unworthy of note. But I'm almost certain I've never run it!