2004-08-01
pretty soon i will have the hunchback
Did you think I had died? Did you think I was comatose watching marathons of I love the 90's? Did you think I had run off and joined the circus? Well the truth is I did all those things plus walked a cancer walk in my hometown.[ok so maybe I just did that last thing but you sure shot up in your seats fast didn'cha?]
Every year, we hold a Relay for Life. People go door-to-door asking for pledges in the name of someone who has died from cancer or is currently battling it. Then they walk for two days straight around a high school track and sleep out in tents that leak with rainwater. Someone from your team has to be on the track at all times. So you relay.[obviously]This was my first year doing such a thing and let me tell you people, the hips did not appreciate.
Perhaps I have never told you all about my wonderful trick hip before. You see, my right hip sticks out a bit more than the left one. This is because I have a slight case of scoliosis. So anyhoodinger, when I walk my hip pops in and out of place. Last year it became such a hassle that I went into a chiropractor who gave me all these silly exercises, told me to change my walking habits[yeah ok whatever you say chief]and cracked it about a million times in a million different places. Now if I go back, he said the next step is surgery. I don't want to have my hip replaced at 17.
So after about five hours straight of these walking shananigans, Audra and I were leaning against each other and crawling along the track. At one point I was thinking about literally getting on all fours save for the fact that the track was sopping wet. Plus once I got down I was afraid I might never get up again. Wouldn't be a fun time spending the rest of my days on my high school's track. Though I would make a pretty attractive hurtle.
Once I finished my stint, I was going to get coffee with Audra every few hours thanks to 24-hour gas stations and pulling an all nighter around a fire. So my eyes were stuck to their contacts, my hair was fried, and I smelled like a fish-smoking plant. Which probably doesn't paint a pretty picture of my hygeine. Hey, when you are walking around a track, does one need lip gloss and to be able to leave a shampoo-whiff trail? NO. This was for cancer kids, let's be a little more empathetic.
Let's just say that yesterday, I walked like one would with a prosthesis. People were staring at me. When I went to see The Manchurian Candidate[which I regally dragged Miss Linguist to]this woman actually had the gullet and pinch to come up and start sympathizing with me about arthritis. Yeah, that didn't put me in the best of moods, but then I saw Liev Schreiber being a great Raymond Shaw and all was forgiven. Until the projector broke in the middle of the movie but that is another story entirely.
(The movie was excellent by the way. I would suggest it highly. But don't expect anything like the original. Meryl Streep's character reminded me of Lady Macbeth with an Oedipus complex. You will know what I mean if you go see it. GO. SEE. IT.)
This has been your trick-hipped diarist. Pull my rubber finger and see what it can do.
Quote of the day:"I have fully come to believe that you are an eighty-five year old trapped in a seventeen year-old's body."-[Audra]