Day 6 Saturday in the park and the power of guilt!

Day 6 Ran 2.5 miles/ Total so far 12.5 miles/ Miles to go 987.5

I knew this blogging thing would work....12 years of Catholic education with the full moral authority of the Nuns and the fear of hell for the least infraction, has meant that if I tell someone I am going to do something (and they have a way of finding out if I don't do it) I have to do it. Nuns knew if you lied...and they had eyes in the backs of their heads and could always see if you were about to pass a note or throw a spit wad. Without turning around or slowing down for a second as they copied a multiplication table on the chalk board, they would yell..."Johnny, I know you are not about to pull Mary's hair again." at just the moment when Johnny was about to pull Mary's hair.....it was uncanny.

I remember one time when I tried to rebel. Fourth grade was a sexist place in my opinion. It was not fair that the girls always got to go first to the drinking fountain. The teacher would line us up in two lines and announce..."Girl's First". One day at just that moment, I stood up in the back of the classroom and yelled "Ladies Last!" Don't ask me why. I was just a weird kid.

At the exact moment that I yelled out my challenge to the surprise of Ms. Dalton, our teacher, Sister Mary Geraldine, the dreaded principal, flew into the room. "Who said that?" she said in a the voice she used for the most serious infractions. Without hesitation, my hand shot up as I replied "I did! I said it." It never occurred to me not to admit it. Catholic Guilt Control meant that lying about it would only make it worse....two sins, God only knew how many extra years in purgatory for the second infraction.

"Go to my office" she commanded. Obediently I did and I waited for what seemed like hours, though it was only a few minutes I am sure as she conferred with Ms. Dalton trying to fathom the answer to the question that I so often heard in those years "What is wrong with Martin?" "Is he off?"

I can still remember the sound of Sister Geraldine (whom we referred to as Jelly Bean the Mean) as her clunky shoes clicked down the hall way. Clop, clop, clop, clop, with my heart beating in rhythm to her steps but harder and harder as she got closer and closer, like the beating heart in Edgar Allan Poe's story The Tail Tail Heart. Then it stopped. She did not immediately open the door. I knew she was standing just outside and she knew I knew. The anticipation was worse than anything she would actually do. My imagination was much more fertile soil for analysing potential punishments that that tired old nun's play book I am sure. There was also the very real possibility that I might be told to call my parents to come get me and what my Dad and Mom would do was worse than any Nun could imagine. More on their particular parental punishments in a future blog.

I suspect today, as I think about that story, that Sister Geraldine really did not even want to deal with this misfit with a big mouth. When she opened the office door, she did not ask me why I had yelled out my command. Did not give me a chance to use the excuse I have been working on in the office. Did not let me tell her that it was not fair that girls always got to go first, especially when boys played much harder at recess and were more thirsty, etc....budding lawyer advocate even then. No she just told me to bend over her desk and then she hit me one time with a Look Magazine and told me to go back to my classroom. That was it. I was stunned. Was there a merciful God? I knew I would be good the rest of the day in gratitude for her leniency, or at least try to be good.

It was knowing that I would have to account to you guys, my blog readers, that motivated me to run yesterday. After the partying of the night before and being on a little vacation, in days gone by I would have convinced myself that I did not need to run, that it could wait until I returned to Dallas. But instead, Leigh and I ran at Central Park. Theweather was incredible. Both of us were tired and yet she ran to support me and I ran to be able to write and to stay on pace for my 1000 miles.

And I am going to run again today too....Life is Good.