Running Just as Fast as We Can

Terry Richardson for Paris Vogue, June/July 2009

Let’s get two things straight:  First, field day participation was mandatory.  I signed up for the shotput because it didn’t involve running.  (I’m still not sure what a shotput is; it’s heavy and you throw it.  Like bowling without shared shoes.)  Second, I signed up for the 100-yard dash because it was the shortest race possible unless I did a relay.  You need a team to do a relay.  Teams like to win.  See where I’m going with this?

There I was, fourteen, sweaty, and wishing I was inside writing my English paper.  I mimicked the other students and crouched down.  In retrospect I should have been a better mimick and adjusted my stance from “playing a leisurely game of leapfrog” to, you know, running?  A true original, c’est moi.

Mrs. Janssen shot the gun and we were off.  My arms held ninety-degree angles and pumped in unison with my legs.   Euphoria built;  I was flying! I was winning!  I kept my eyes on the track and ran.  Then, glancing smugly at the finish line, I saw them:  my fellow racers, all waiting for me to finish.  My fist pump wavered midair, euphoria ebbed and I snuck into the library to look up “shotput” and read Sassy.

Terry Richardson for Paris Vogue, June/July 2009

This morning I submitted the manuscript for my first writing workshop.  After months of writing in the comfort of privacy I sent out a story to be read by my peers.  It felt good, a mixture of relief and pride.  Then I did something  stupid:  I looked to the finish line.  In this case, Claire Keegan, whose story in the latest New Yorker was the best part of the issue.  Floating with the weight of the deadline removed, I’d decided to “treat” myself by starting her short story collection Walk the Blue Fields.  The opening story was everything a story should be and, it seemed to me, many things my story was not.  My treat turned into an indictment.

My field day defeat was embarassing but it didn’t tell me anything new.  I hate running.  “I want to be a runner” is right under “I want a pair of rainbow Crocs” on the list “Phrases Sariah’s Evil Clone Will Utter.”  Standing on the G train platform reading Keegan’s stories wasn’t embarassing but it told me something new:  “maybe I’m no good at this.”

I wanted to turn around, run home and recall the email with my manuscript attached.  But I didn’t.   We have to start somewhere, right?  Thankfully, talent isn’t a limited-capacity train where seats are assigned based on who gets to the station earliest (hello, 21 year-old novelist extraordinaire,) who knows the conductor, or who takes advantage of his enormity to push everyone out of his way and then block the entrance so no one else can enter.  (This morning was a bad commute, can you tell?)   Talent takes work.  There’s no 100-yard dash.  Thankfully, there’s no shotput either.  I couldn’t even lift that sucker to the proper position.