I Adopted A Running Routine, Not A Highway

I was on my daily run the other day, and this older gentleman with a beer gut the size of an actual beer fridge stopped me to explain he had seen me run by previously and noticed I had gone right by a piece of paper on the ground without stopping to pick it up. He pointed at said piece of paper, still on the ground, and with a sort of struggled, puzzled stare masking an already pretty ugly silhouette if we’re being honest, asked me why I didn’t pick it up… I stood in place for a moment, computing what I had just heard. The sun beamed down on me. It felt like a spotlight, and I was a contestant on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ as I struggled to come up with the correct answer for why I seemingly had the audacity to run by a lonesome sheet of paper, without picking it up.

Uh. And do what with exactly?… No I’ll wait. For you to actually use your fucking brain. The thing that’s obviously sat silent for so many, very important moments in this poor man’s life. Think about it. Old man who will surely never see this blog. Use your brain. I’m jogging. Out for a run. What on god’s green earth of a fuck do you want me to do with this piece of paper? Put it in someone’s mailbox? What’s their address? Am I guessing? Oh I forgot the wind won’t blow pieces of paper around if they’re already at the correct address. Is this the next level of mail carrier service some nerd at Hogwarts invented instead of giving his hog, warts? Sorry Hedwig. The wind delivers that now.

And if you think I’m running all the way back with a sheet of paper posing as a rock to win some contest against an imaginary pair of scissors in my pocket, you’re even dumber than you look. Am I the garbage man too now? Do I get a salary from the local waste management company? If you want me to start carrying a black trash bag when I run, just write me in the comments with a link to your Venmo so you can pay me the hourly rate of whatever a mail carrier and garbage man makes combined. And I’m obviously not knocking the people who keep our neighborhoods clean or deliver our mail. Those look like some tough jobs that I’d never want to do and I’m glad there are better people than me doing it. All I’m saying is I don’t think expecting joggers to clean up after your shitty neighbors is a thought that a logical thinking person has ever had.

It’s always old people too. They’re always fat. Never dressed in appropriately fitting clothes. And they’re obviously never happy with their lives. Because the retired people who are healthy and happy are always out doing things. They lead fun and interesting lives. They aren’t sitting at home all day, figuring out who or what to be mad at next like they’re putting together one big, pathetic puzzle. No. They’re not worried about what their neighbors are doing. They don’t care. It doesn’t matter. But when you’re 75 with the same amount in extra pounds slowly suffocating your organs, and you’ve had untreated asthma and god knows what else running rampant throughout your body for the last decade, walking to get the mail is a chore, so that’s all you do. That’s your excitement for the day. And when that isn’t enough excitement for an entire day, because it isn’t for anyone not on really good drugs, you create the excitement out of necessity. Out of boredom. And because you pull it out of thin air, it can be anything you want it to be. And it’s much easier to use what little remaining energy you have on getting yourself worked up over seeing someone with a smile on their face jog by a piece of trash without picking it up, than it is to actually address the issues in your life making you this miserable pile of shit who cares about how clean the joggers keep your street for you in the first place. Go for a drive sometime. Or take a walk. There are plenty of nice parks to explore. Or piers to walk off of. Anything. Just get out of your miserable little bubble. You’d have to cover more ground getting a first down in a football game than you do in a typical day. That’s not good for you. But do you know what is? Walking the extra ten steps to pick up that elusive scrap of writing stationary your hawk eyes saw me run by from the comfort of your expired lazy boy you’ve been massaging the floor boards of that screen porch with for the last fifteen years. Maybe give the lever on the recliner a rest, start picking up your own trash, and that human sized hacky sack of fat and hair you have growing off your normal stomach might start shrinking for a change.

Also how the fuck am I supposed to run and hold on to a trash bag full of your neighborhood’s garbage? Because I’m assuming that’s what you want me to do here. Surely you can’t be so selfish, where you only care about if there’s garbage at the end of your driveway. Right? So obviously I’d have to run with a bag of some sort, to put said garbage in. Correct? I don’t know if you’ve ever carried groceries in from the car or played Santa Claus, but carrying a bag of something while you walk isn’t always the easiest thing in the world to do. So if someone were to be running many miles while simultaneously carrying one of these bags, that would be quite the difficult task. Do we agree? Yeah. So go fuck yourself. I can put a bag over your head and tighten the strings as hard as humanly possible. We can do that. Those black glad bags are tough too. Really hard to poke a hole in one of those bad boys. And those strings never break.

I didn’t adopt-a-highway. Pick up your own trash.