Stickles Family Fun Run 2008
6 October 2008My father is constantly watching his offspring for any sign of running prowess. Bud delivered at a very early age but Dad is still holding out hope that Peej and I will wake up one morning and decide to run a 10k for fun. One day this summer I was walking to the train in the morning and I ran into my dad & stepmom, who were taking their dog for a walk (this happens more than you would think, that I’m out somewhere and run into one or several of my parents or other relatives within the confines of our 2 square mile town. When I first re-arrived back in Glen Rock I was walking through town when some car honked at me and I instinctively flipped them off, and it turned out to be my mom) and I got so distracted that I forgot to get onto the train platform in time for the 7:07 and had to bolt for it, breaking one of my personal rules (never run for public transportation). The next time I saw my dad he cheerfully told me that my running form had much improved since high school, even though in this particular instance I was wearing a pencil skirt and flip flops and had a very restricted range of movement. “You used to run all flat footed.” Oh, good, I’m glad I got that taken care of. There have been periods in my life where I’ve considered myself a runner but it’s never come easily to me the way it does to most of the other people with my last name, and usually when I’m running a lot it’s just because I feel spiteful about the holes in my genetic make up and have decided to fill them in myself. This usually doesn’t last for more than 8 weeks or so before I go back to being unathletic and eating Oreos for breakfast, as I did both today and yesterday.
So it was with a mixture of joy and trepidation that I read the following email from my dad, which arrived mid-August.
Good morning, everyone:Well, about two years ago I made two resolutions re my then distant 60th birthday. The first was to lose fifteen pounds or so and thus weigh in under {redacted for the sake of my dad’s modesty, if he has any left} on the big day. I am happy to report that I was able to do that ({exact weight}, to be precise). The second was to be in good enough shape to run through the 2.5 mile Arboretum Run on the Labor Day following my birthday (within thirty days thereof, and thus sufficiently in the neighborhood to qualify as a birthday event) with my extended family and other loved ones. (This is especially important to me, as my knees are telling me in no uncertain terms that this is likely to be the last time I pin a number on my shirt and run around town.)I write with respect to that second resolution.The annual Glen Rock Labor Day Arboretum Run will be held on Monday, September 1, 2008. The 2.5 Mile Run starts at 9:25 am, followed by a Junior Mile, for those children 8 and older, and a Fun Run for those 7 and younger. I am “running” the 2.5 miler. Everyone - all of you and all members of your families, young and old - is invited to join me. Vicki and I will be pleased to cover your application fee, with the single proviso that you must run with me and keep me company throughout the race. I’ll warn you in advance ( this is particularly important advice for Conor, Molly and Seamus) that I’ll be shuffling along in the 12 minute per mile range, so if you’re accustomed to moving faster than that, you’ll have to adjust. (Younger folk who don’t think they can manage the 2.5 but who want to try the Junior Mile or the Fun Run will be our guests as well.)After we all recover, it’s back to Ashton Place for burgers and dogs, and, since I’ll be mailing our mortgage payoff package to Citi during the race ( a mailbox being located en route), we’ll have the classic American mortgage burning ritual, together with cake for the summer birthday people.I’ve been looking forward to this for years. Thanks for being part of it.Peace,
Bob/LYF/Grandpa Bob/Uncle Bob
A couple of items of note– when he signs things “Peace” he means it in a Jesus-ey kind of way and not in the way that Usher or other various rappers use it. Also, he’s taken to calling himself Grandpa Bob in written communication even though the only person who calls him that can’t really talk yet, much less scroll through her inbox on her blackberry.
My conditions for participating in this race were that I’d only do it if Peej were there as well, and that if I made everyone matching Tshirts they were required to enthusiastically wear them. This took about 4 trips to Michaels for plain white shirts and iron on letters but it was the best mandate I’ve ever laid down, because it meant that as we approached the starting line the rest of the field got to marvel at the sight of a bunch of people ages 8 through 60 who all look more or less exactly the same even before you put them in matching shirts proclaiming that they were With Bob.
Dad’s shirt, naturally, just said Bob. Unlike the rest of us I didn’t put his name on the back of his shirt, which is the only thing I would change about the project in retrospect since one of Dad’s rules was that no one could beat him so we all spent most of the race looking at his back. For awhile I was considering not doing names but Stations Re: Bob but that would have gotten complicated in a hurry. I didn’t even feel like ironing “daughter” onto my shirt, much less “brother in law,” which is just a lot of letters. I also struggled mightily with the punctuation problem since iron on letter kits don’t come with apostrophes. I was just going to go without them but I wouldn’t have been able to ever look at those shirts again if they had said IM WITH BOB.
I’ve probably never been so proud of anything as I am of those shirts. These are the life skills that being in a sorority gives to you.
Patrick was in charge of taking pictures over the course of the run and I put myself in charge of video. This was a brilliant tactical move– PJ took over 190 pictures during the run, whereas I got half a mile into it and went “Wait, I remember now, I hate running” and circled back to the finish line. I ran the last straightaway of the run with my family and when I turned my number in to the official at the end I confessed to cheating, but he didn’t seem concerned. My name was still listed in the local newspaper. I think everyone should run every race like this. Why even bother doing the middle part?
Dad wasn’t kidding when he said he would be paying the house off in the middle of the race (he mailed the last mortgage check around 1.4 miles in) and then returning to the house he fully owned to light the relevant documentation on fire. Housing Crisis? What Housing Crisis? Everyone else in this country is defaulting on their mortgage whereas we are merely burning ours.
One of the things I hate about my video camera is hearing the sound of my own voice, which makes me want to claw out both my eardrums and vocal chords to keep myself and anyone else from having to listen to it. I think I sound frighteningly close to Daria Morgendorffer. The only time I don’t is just as Dad is about to start lighting things on fire in our backyard and I get nervous about not having an exit strategy (like, say, water or a fire extinguisher), and that is the only reason I’m posting this video– so I have proof that I don’t always sound like a 14 year old who is trying too hard to be ironic. I would suggest you keep the sound pretty low for this one, as it is a “tradition” in my family to sing off-key to the birthday song, which has nothing to do with the fact that not a one of us can “carry a tune.” I had no idea that my uncles were so skilled in lighting pieces of paper on fire, but as soon as the mortgage catches you hear two of them going “turn it upside down! Don’t let the flame go out, it’s bad luck!”
Dad sets the house on fire from Cristin on Vimeo.
Anyway.
Patrick, let it be said, destroyed this race. He ran the whole thing and afterwards looked like he could have done it again 4 times without breaking a sweat. He also did it in velcro sneakers from WalMart and kept me distracted from how much running sucks by shouting things like “Looks like we’re getting a dispatch from The Ministry Of Funny Running!” before skipping for an entire block, and he doesn’t exactly have a lifestyle conducive to athletic exertion. He was amazing.
Photo gallery here.Good place to go if you want to see me misspell things in the captions and make self-deprecating comments about how I quit the race after two blocks, or if you want to see pictures where I look like an 8 foot tall albino grasshopper. Seriously. My understanding about adolescence was that you outgrew it around age 18, but these say otherwise.
I did a little movie for my dad that is mostly a slideshow interspersed with the video clips where I don’t sound quite as annoying as usual (still pretty bad, though. I’ll never again make fun of how those Olympic gymnasts sound when cheering each other on). I’ve given about fifty billion caveats to everyone who’s watched it so far: I still haven’t learned how to use any transitions other than “wipe right” in Windows Movie Maker and you start getting vertigo from it after awhile; I am pretty sure a fairly advanced 3rd grader could have done a better job on this; I really thought that the music would cover up the audio on some of the more annoying clips but it didn’t, so you just have to deal with me yelling “Good Stretching, Guys!” to everyone before the race starts. (Though let it be said that the stretching clips are probably my favorite part of the whole thing– you can’t really hear what PJ says, but he’s telling me “You have to hold it for 15 seconds. Otherwise it doesn’t count” (that’s what she said) and then when you see Uncle Michael and Uncle Tom they’re both kind of flapping their arms around before Michael resorts to just practicing his golf swing, which must be genetic because my dad used to do it ALL THE DAMN TIME. He would come to visit me in high school when I was working at the bookstore and just stand in front of the counter and fake golf for a few minutes while I was all “DaaaaAAAD, STOOOooop.” After the stretching it goes to Uncle Ricky ordering us to either win the race or don’t come home, but before you hear him saying that you hear my Aunt Kathy go “Ever see that movie There Will Be Blood?” and I have no idea what she was talking about but it seems like the perfect reference for that exact moment in time when I was thinking about faking an aneurysm to get out of running). But I should stop narrating and just let this glorious piece of art do all of the talking because at the end of the day I will probably never in my life make something better than this and I’m upset that I didn’t save it for Christmas, because according to my stepmom it made my dad cry when he saw it for the first time and after last Christmas when he cried looking at pictures of The Baby when the real baby was, herself, just two feet away I’ve been vowing to find a way to ellicit a similar response from him. Now turn the sound back up.
Take us home, Bruce:
See Bob Run from Cristin on Vimeo.
3 Responses to “Stickles Family Fun Run 2008”
October 7th, 2008 at 12:38 am
I am so disappointed right now that there’s no one in my family named Seamus.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:26 am
This made my entire day when I watched it yesterday. I kind of want to be adopted into your family. Any slots open? Jennifer isn’t a very good qualifying name, though.
PS - every time I go to my stepbrother’s house, my sister-in-law tries to shove her camera under my nose and show me picture of Genna, my niece … while I’m trying to play with her, live and in person.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Cute video, and those shirts were awesome! I don’t blame you for looping around to the finish - half a month is not nearly enough advanced notice for any kind of running, in my book.