Story 2: Michael Lancer's Accurate and Useful Techniques for Running

A light comedy about Kelly and Michael, two teachers, one of which not quite as qualified as the other.

Michael Lancer’s Accurate and Useful Techniques for Running

    I was sitting in the front living room, casually reading the newspaper, when the front door flew open with exaggerated enthusiasm, revealing my neighbor with an arm cast and eye patch.

     “You will never BELIEVE what happened to me this weekend!” he exclaimed, moving over to the couch and sitting down with me.

     “What happened?” I asked.

     “All right, so you know how I’ve been jogging lately, right?”

     “Right,” I said. I had seen him struggling around the block a few times lately in addition to all the bragging he’s been doing lately.

     “Well all of a sudden, my leg started cramping up in the middle of the road, and this stupid SUV came speeding around the corner and ran me over!”

     “Holy crap!” I exclaimed, but then I remembered who I was talking to. “Oh, wait. This didn’t actually happen, did it?”

     “Seriously, Kelly? I come over wrapped in bandages and you’re calling me a liar?”

     “Well you do have a habit of stretching the truth, Michael,” I admitted. I didn’t want to come off as a b***h, but I always got the feeling that whenever he tells me a story like this, I’ve already heard a similar one before.

     “Nonsense, I always tell the truth 100%,” he said with pride.

     “Well why do you only have a cast on your arm then?”

     “Uh, hello?” He pointed to his face. “Eye patch?”

     “Right. Why only the arm and eye, then?”

     “Well luckily, I’ve been working out a lot, so the doctors think I built up so much muscle that I resisted most of the impact.”

     I couldn’t help myself- I let out a little snort of a giggle. “Oh really?”

     “You can be so mean sometimes, Kelly,” Michael said as he pretended to tear up.

     I smiled. “I’m sorry. Please. Continue.”

     Michael wiped a fake tear away. “I suppose I can forgive you. Anyway, I’ve come a long way in my workout routine. I’ve obviously become ridiculously buff. So buff that I can survive being run over.”

     “Clearly.” I will admit that Michael has lost some weight since he’s started jogging (and doing whatever else he considerd working out- still haven’t heard many details on that from him yet). But buff? Uh-uh. You still got a long way to go, Mikey. Not that I wanted to crush his deluded image of himself. “So I get the arm cast, but why the eye patch?”

     “I cut this part of my face up pretty bad,” he said while caressing his patch. “The doctor wanted me to wear it so I wouldn’t pick at it.”

     “Ah. So do you need any help or anything?”

     “Nah, I’m good.”

     “Can you drive?”

     “I’m not supposed to. But I manage anyway.”

     “Can I at least give you a lift to work?”

     “Nah.”

     “Come on, we work at the same place.”

     “I’m fine, Kelly. But thank you,” he said. Michael always did things like this, which is why I stopped becoming super concerned about him over the couple of years we’ve been neighbors. He would barge in, tell some wild story that pit him at the center of attention, and when I would show concern and sympathy to whatever he was going on about, he blew it off like it was no big deal.

     “Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” I admitted.

     “Thanks. Well I gotta go,” he said as he got up, clutching his back and wincing. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

     “Okay, bye” I waved as he walked out the door. After he was gone, I shook my head and chuckled to myself. “Wonder what he’s going to say to everyone tomorrow.”

***

     As I pulled into the parking lot of the middle school, I noticed that Michael’s car was already there. I figured he must have left early to make up for the extra time it would have taken him to get there due to his injuries. I grabbed my bag and headed through the main entrance, making my way for the teacher’s lounge to grab a quick cup of coffee before my first class. When I opened the door, a crowd of teachers surrounded Michael, who stood on a desk lamenting his experience.

     “And jogging isn’t easy, guys, let me tell you. As an experienced runner, you need to make sure you’re doing all the right things or else this could happen to you,” he exclaimed while waving his hand about himself.

     His audience ooh’d and ahh’d, but I wondered if any of them realized that he just said he got those injuries because he’s really an inexperienced runner.

     “I was lucky. I’ve been working out for years, and if it wasn’t for the extra muscle I’ve put on, that maniac driver could have killed me.”

     “How do you do it?” one of the teachers asked.

     Michael looked confused. “Do what?”

     “Become so fit. It’s obviously working out great for you. I want to start exercising more, too.”

     The group of teachers all nodded and murmured in agreement. I laughed to myself and rolled my eyes.

     “Very well, I’ll share my secret training methods with you. First of all, eating is not your friend. When you exercise, whether you’re running or lunging or what have you, make sure that you have not eaten anything beforehand for at least a couple of hours.”

     “Really? I thought that was dangerous.”

     Michael sucked in the remainder of his gut. “Does this look like a lie?” he asked.

     Oh, man. If only the phys ed teachers could hear this. I poured myself a cup of coffee as I continued listening to him.

     “When you have food in your stomach, it weighs you down and makes you drowsy. Therefore, it’s crucial to keep food out of your system until you’ve caught your breath again, long after you’ve finished working out.”

     “What about water?” someone else asked.

     “Water is okay, but only in small doses. Too much will make you want to pee, and if you keep interrupting your workout to use the bathroom, you’ll get weaker results. It’s very important to be in a constant rhythm of working out with as little breaks as possible.”

     “How often should we work out?”

     “Um, I’d say twice a day for beginners, maybe three or four, depending on how long you’ll be doing it. It’s important to just throw your body into the process so it can adjust as quickly as possible. It also lets you know if your body can handle it. Exercise just isn’t for everybody, unfortunately.”

     I couldn’t believe these guys believed Michael. It’s embarrassing that they’re teachers. His reasoning reminded me of an arrogant student misleading a handful of students to have faith in something that was obviously untrue. I finished my drink and poured myself another cup before heading out to my first class. As I left, Michael began preaching about the dangers of Gatorade during a workout. I shook my head. That Michael, I thought. I felt like my entire relationship with him mirrored that of a sitcom. From casually entering my home to the same place of employment, he definitely met the secondary character status of the show that was my life.

     On my way to class, I passed one of the gym teachers. I stopped him to let him know there was something interesting going on in the teacher’s lounge that he may want to drop in on.

***

     The next day, I ran into Michael as we were walking into school. “Hey, Michael,” I casually said.

     “Kelly! You’ll never BELIEVE what happened in the teacher’s lounge yesterday!”

     “Hmm. Were you gathering a cult of followers and giving life advice to them?”

     “Close.  A bunch of people flocked around me, asking me for advice on my workout routine. Can you BELIEVE that?”

     I wondered if Michael even noticed I was there when it happened. “No, Michael. I can honestly say I can’t.”

     “Yeah, it was great. But then Coach Lou came barging in and started telling everyone that all my techniques weren’t any good. Some nerve, right?”

     “Well, he is professionally trained with that kind of knowledge.”

     “Oh, who asked you?”

     “Tell me again, did your trainer recommend your current process? Or was it the result of all the research you did beforehand?”

     Michael smiled. “Self-taught. Pretty impressive, if I say so myself.”

     “Yeah, pretty impressive that you’re not constantly throwing up.”

     “Say what you want, but I survived getting run over by a truck because my workout improved my physique by THAT much.”

     “I thought you said it was an SUV.”

     “Nope. It was a truck.”

     This story of his was getting wackier every time he told it. Oh, Michael. You’re going to get bitten in the a*s if you kept this up.

     Later that day, after school had let out, I had gone outside to find the track and field coach to ask her something when- who would have guessed- Michael was there, teaching the students how to run properly.

     “You’ve got to have good form,” he said while jogging in place, wailing his arm and legs all over the place. “You’ve got to flail about in order to loosen yourself up as much as you can. The more flexible you are while running, the better the results will be.”

     “Oh, Lord,” I said as I rushed over to save the students from splitting their spines in half. “Excuse me, Mr. Lancer, but can I have a word with you?”

     “Sure thing,” he replied. “I’ll be right back, guys. I need to talk to Ms. Dale for a moment.”

     I pulled him over to the side by the strap on his arm cast. “Are you insane?”

     “What?” he asked. “Mrs. Levi was sick today, so I volunteered to coach her team today.”

     “By whose permission?”

     “Kelly, you don’t need permission to volunteer.”

     I was speechless, but shook the feeling off. “Never mind all that. You can’t teach these kids.”

     “Why not?”

     “Well, I may not be an expert at health like you, but flailing your broken arm around seems like a really smart way to make it worse.”

     “The best way to heal a broken bone is to move it as much as possible in order to increase the circulation of white blood cells.”

     I had no response to that. “Second of all, I hate to say it, but you’re going to injure these kids with your running techniques.”

     “Nonsense, I’m just as qualified as any other phys ed instructor here. Well, not Coach Lou, he thinks I’m wrong, so obviously he doesn’t know anything.”

     “You can’t teach them,” I repeated, ignoring his idiocy. “You’re going to get them in serious trouble.”

     “I told them everything I do myself, and I didn’t turn out so bad, did I?”

     “You’re in a sling! And you have an eye patch on!” I exclaimed.

     “Oh. Well, I have to be honest, Kelly. I didn’t actually get run over while running.”

    “You don’t say.” I wasn’t that surprised. “What really happened, then?”

     “Well, I actually tripped over my shoelaces,” Michael muttered. I scraped my arm pretty bad and made myself a makeshift sling to help it heal.”

     “I thought you needed to move it as much as possible. You know. For the white blood cells to circulate.”

     “… But it hurts.”

     I shook my head. “What about the eye patch?”

     Michael slowly removed it from his face and opened his eye, squinting as he adjusted to the light. “I thought it looked cool with the sling.”

     “You’re a jerk.”

     “Okay, I admit it was a little woe is me. But look! I’ve inspired a bunch of people to start exercising! Isn’t that the important thing?”

      “You told them all the wrong things!”

     “Hey, I still do those things. And I have lost weight.”

     I shook my head. “Oh, Michael…”

     Michael began crossing the road where the buses lined up to go back inside the school.

     “Don’t worry, nothing bad is going to happen-”

     “Michael!!” I screamed as I ran to help him.

     Dumb jerk can’t even look before crossing the street.

***

     “You’re lucky that the bus was only going a couple of miles per hour,” I said as I looked at a bandaged Michael in the hospital bed.

     He winced. I hoped that meant he understood how lucky he was.

     “Maybe that will teach you a lesson,” I said as I placed a get well card on his bedside table.

 

Author's Note

I've started jogging lately and I hurt my lower back last week. Let me be the first to admit that guys are HUGE WUSSES when it comes to being sick and in pain.