Monday, August 7, 2017

Requiem For A Race

Music has a way of bringing back memories. Maybe it's a graduation song or the first dance at a wedding but music has the awesome ability to make us feel and remember.

I ran cross country and track from middle school until I graduated high school because in the response of fight or flight I knew where my best chances of survival were. Although United Airlines has kinda changed that slogan to more of a cause and effect thing now called Flight and Fight, but we aren't going to get into that.

I remember during the Fall of my senior year, it was the last big Cross Country meet of the season (for those of us not going to the Meet of Champions, because as it turned out, Senioritis can affect ones mastery and motivation in sports as well). There were a bunch of schools at this race and as seemingly hundreds of kids stood at the starting line, I half-expected a war paint wearing William Wallace to step in front of us and deliver some supercharged speech to motivate us. However, as warm-ups and track suits were shed in a massively displeasing scrawny person strip tease, no courageous commander stood out in front of us. Our motivation would have to come from massive speakers along the sidelines of the course that had been blaring Aerosmith, AC/DC and Ozzy Osbourne throughout the previous races.

We stood in shivering, short shorted silence and awaited the starting gun and the song that would send us off. Our ears were met by the sounds of the abrupt and awkward selection of "Build Me Up Buttercup" by The Foundations. Is this a phenomenal piece of music? Absolutely. Are you going to hear this song backing a monumental moment in a sports movie montage? Respectfully, I'd have to say no. I have, still do and will continue to belt the song out anytime I hear it, despite the objections of those around me, but the first thought that pops into my head will forevermore be standing at the Cross Country starting line, cold and confused.

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