A nod to Mr. Gone for pointing out that the
IDIOTAROD
is in a few weeks.
When I was ten or eleven I saw Ben Hur on a tiny black and white TV. The chariot race convinced the reptile parts of my brain that Charlton Heston was the coolest person on earth.
Within a week some friends and I started going to the local super market and re-enacting the chariot races with stolen borrowed shopping carts. One guy would be the rider and stand in the cart holding a jump rope or something similar. The other guy would wrap the rope around his waist and be the horse. We would run around the parking area of the supermarket until they chased us away. Or someone needed a tetanus shot.
I call that period in my life the stupid years. When someone suggests riding your bicycle down a flight of stairs, you think cool. In the mind of an eleven year old boy the word cool is a synonym for potentially life threatening. It is also the time when your obsession with candy, toys and cartoons hasn’t fully switched into an obsession for girls, cars and music. And for some reason, you think Ninjas are really cool. I think that is the true spirit of the Idiotarod.
