(appy-polly-logies to Mr. Charles)
I woke up with a sour stomach. It was raining again, and it was the middle of the night. That’s how I knew when I overdid it–I woke up in the middle of the night. It was that back of the throat burn, some sort of habañero salsa chaser taste with it. I stretched out my legs and shifted position, but that wasn’t going to do it. I brushed my teeth, let the dog out one last time, and moved my things from the couch to the bedroom. I read a little bit, but the beeps and boops coming from my phone were too much and I decided to see what videos the kids were posting these days. While I was flipping through with slow flicks of my finger, I saw a few videos of idiots running through a city. They were very clever and very acrobatic, but they were really only running. The flips and such were lucky. I started thinking about the times we should’ve been filming our runs through cities, through towns, through neighborhoods. How many six-second clips could we have stacked up in those years? How many wall-walks and yard surfs? How many near crashes and real crashes? Our videos would’ve gotten a lot of likes, I told myself. We could’ve maybe gotten some gas money out of the deal. Real-life Jackass, but captured for all to see, instead of just for us to endure. We had good war stories, but no war. It was just us, running through life like those idiots running through cities. I chewed two antacids, drank half a glass of water, and then opened the window a crack to hear the pitter-patter from multiple downspouts. The videos would have to wait.