Only Fools Run at Midnight
That’s the name of the race and the reason that I drove downtown last night at 11:30pm—to join in the silly side of Sitka. I’ve seen the outdoorsy, musical, professional, and friendly sides of town, but wanted something more bizarre without having to risk my reputation in local dive bars. Well, truthfully, it was probably a bit like a dive bar, spending the night with sweaty convicts, fishermen, jesters, and goofballs in mismatched clothing.
Oddly, the race and its absurdities went right along with everything else running through my mind all week. A couple nights ago I lay awake thinking of the kid’s game “Red light, Green light,” how one of my patients can’t keep the pedals on an arm bike moving smoothly, how I alternately wish for time to speed up and then hang onto it desperately to take in every detail. Another analogy: the dining room in the Dementia Ward. There is Helen* who is always busy—combing her hair with a fork, sticking slippers on armrests, conducting a symphony of door alarms, and piling stuffed animals in the lap of the dapper man in the feathered hat. Ernie on the other hand barely captures a bite from his plate before he falls asleep again, arm and spoon mid-air, cream of wheat in suspense until someone taps him on the shoulder to set him back in motion. [My patient, also pleasantly in her own reality, looks at me with wide eyes: “Ooh, this is exciting!”]
So, I sit at 34, hoping that I can hold here for a while and capture a bite of everything on my plate, but unfortunately I also keep speeding toward my own state of oblivion where I’ll most likely resemble Claudine, pounding the table and demanding cookies.
*yes, of course in the interest of tiny town, “names have been changed…”
Tags: time, US of A
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