Marathon Boy

My face was beet red, sweat was trickling into places it had never been before, the smog was squeezing me like a python...

April 1966

I was fast. I mean one of the fastest kids in the school. Every morning before school started we who contended for the title of fastest kid at Lincoln Elementary would gather at one end of the playground and sprint the width—maybe 60 yards—crashing into the chain link fence, the order of the clanking sound designating the winner as well as the runners-up. I was almost always third, and that’s fast; there were a lot of us lining up for race after race, each of us trying to beat Donnie, the fastest, smallest kid I’ve ever seen. Didn’t matter if you raced him in the first race, figuring he wasn’t warmed up yet, or in the sixth race, when you figured he was tired. There just wasn’t any difference: the boy took off and left everyone in his tailwind.
But that was in the 2nd and 3rd grade. In the 4th grade though, a kid named Jay Johnson arrived and made Donnie turn invisible. Jay looked like he was 16, which to our 10-year-old eyes was a full-grown adult. He could hit a softball not just out of right field, but all the way to the fence that separated the school from a nursery school, which was two baseball fields away, and the ball would hit that chain link fence with force. He was strong, quick, very fast and dominated every game that was played in elementary school. I’m telling you Donnie just disappeared. Ok, he moved. But maybe it was because he was no longer idolized.
When we were in the 6th grade, Mrs. Jones proposed a marathon race. We had no idea what that was but we were up for it. It turned out that a marathon race started when a Greek guy 500 years before the birth of Christ ran from one city to another to say they had won a war. For us though, it was a long race around the perimeter of the school, then two jogs around the log cabin that housed the sport equipment and finally a hundred yards in a straight line to the finish line. By the 6th grade though I was no longer fast; my legs and arms suddenly began having a life of their own, flapping this way and that clumsily for every movement as if all four limbs were having a serious argument. That wasn’t going to stop me of course. It was irrefutable that Jay would win the race; the drama was in how the rest of us would do. I intuitively knew that I would not do well. Pain and I never got along well, and I was perfectly willing to cease any activity that was causing it. Not that the pain in your chest, lungs, and legs was the worst pain around but to me there wasn’t much point in putting up with it for a contest where there was no score to it. Still though I was going to do it and I looked forward to it.
“On your mark, get set, go!” Mrs. Jones had a smile in her voice and was wearing sunglasses. Jay Johnson broke out from the pack immediately, put a 15 yard lead on us and then set it to cruise control. I was quickly conceding to the slightest pain, but the race had pecking order implications, to which I was sensitive. One’s standing in the race was a direct correlation to one’s social standing. No way was I going to finish side by side with the outcasts of our tribe, Gene, who was a source of continual annoyance, and Mooney, a kid who was skittish and nervous but quiet who had a way of making the rest of us nervous. Behind them would be Billy Welsh, who would walk the whole thing. I had to be in the middle of the pack or face the consequence of falling down a peg.
I was somewhere in the back half of the middle when we hit our first turn. I stayed by the fence as Mrs. Jones had described it to us, but almost everyone else cut the corner. I was in mortal danger now of being caught by the laggers. I felt ashamed to do it but I cut the next corner with everyone else. We could hear Mrs. Jones calling out to us to knock it off. We were getting tired as we headed toward the log cabin. Asthmatic kids were wheezing and dropping out. Kids who assumed they would do well were barely jogging, then walking, then barely jogging again. Jay Johnson appeared to feel sorry for us as he took it down a notch. We were now close enough to hear his US Keds slapping the asphalt.
The idea of circling the log cabin twice after running such an unprecedented lengthy amount of time made me wonder if this was the cause of that smile in Mrs. Jones’ voice. I began to hate the Greek guy who got all this started. If Mrs. Jones wanted us to learn about it what could be better than reading it out of a book? My face was beet red, sweat was trickling into places it had never been before, the smog was squeezing me like a python, and I was still behind a dozen of my peers. This was basketball ball without the ball, hoop or any apparent reason. I was hoping for a twisted ankle so that I could have a reason to stop running, but ultimately I figured I was close enough to the end to finish the race.
As we completed the first lap around the cabin, something odd happened. Jay Johnson peeled off and headed down the stretch. He had either forgotten to go around twice or thought he had already done so or he was cheating, although he never had any need to cheat. And that’s when every other kid that came behind him did exactly the same thing. Now I’m not saying I’m a directions nerd but I was determined to run the race as instructed. This meant that every single kid got ahead of me. Well, except for Gene and Mooney, but even they nearly caught me. Billy Welsh had stopped walking some time ago and was pretending to mop the sweat off his brow while sitting with the girls.
After crossing the finish line we gathered around Mrs. Jones. We were gasping and bent over with our hand on our knees, except for Jay who stood grinning, with his arms akimbo, waiting to be praised.
“And the winner is,” she grinned, “no one! You are all disqualified!”
The uproar that followed was so intense and loud that she had to blow her yard whistle to restore order.
“I said twice around the log cabin, and none of you did it!” Jay Johnson took his hands off his hips and put his head down. We were all quiet. It took a while but a thought came to the surface and I spoke out before I could examine it thoroughly.
“Mrs. Jones, I went around it twice,” I said matter of factly.
“Yeah, sure. Very clever of you,” she remarked in an unteacherly voice.
“I did it.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured, turning away from me. “All right! Let’s get back to class, come on.”
“I did. I went around twice, no one else did. They’re all disqualified, and I’m not, so I won the race.”
She stopped and turned to look at me, lowering her glasses for a moment, then turned away again walking off without comment. I felt that she knew I was telling the truth but she just wasn’t going to hand the title of marathon winner to anyone who won merely on a technicality. I wasn’t mad or sad. I wasn’t happy either. I just knew that I won it and I would always know it and believe it, even if no one acknowledged it.