We would meet in the parking lot of
Wheaton Woods pool and decorate our cars with black and orange streamers. The
chill of the early morning air was nothing compared to the wall of water we
would soon be launching in to as we strived to sweep the field with blue
ribbons. Someone would be playing our team song on the single front speaker of their
1970’s station wagon loud enough for the entire parking lot to hear. The Eye of
the Tiger. Survivor’s finest song. For years that tune started the adrenaline
that would carry me toward victory, which manifest as a ribbon in hand at
McDonalds on any given Saturday during the summers of my childhood. What I took
for granted was the fact that Dave Bickler wasn’t singing about Elvira, the
Queen of Darkness, at any point in his illustrious career. Instead, he was
singing about ‘our rivals’. I suppose it made a lot more sense for him to be
singing in generalities rather than specifically focusing in on a single
figurehead of Halloween, but for years and years, I conjured her image while I
waited for the gunshot on the blocks. ‘Rising up to the challenge of Elvira’
rather than ‘Rising up to the challenge of our rivals’ shaped my entire
perception of sport and competition during the most formative years of my life.
I was going to beat that scantily clad mistress of the dark no matter what!
I’m pretty sure that I have some
undiagnosed learning disability that allows me to find and replace rational
thought with an Elvira narrative. I think it lives in the same part of my brain
that can’t spell, or formulate sentences into grammatically correct arrangements.
I am an enemy to those who are sticklers for proper grammar. They think I’m
ignorant, and aloof to the strict written rules of the English language. And in
todays world, where 93% of communication happens through fingers on a device,
coming across as an educated scientist is a real struggle when you read over
your/you’re typo’s a few times before hitting send, only to realize afterward
that you racked up a bunch of incoherent sentences to someone you have no
relationship with. ß See that? It’s a sentence
ending in a proposition, ENDING IN A PROPOSITION! Ok, It’s a preposition, but I
only just realized that after furiously typing the previous sentence. I can come up with a hypothesis to explain
results fresh off the columns, but man, do I find the English language vexing.
In the end, I think I get my point across just fine. I am
pretty sure that no one questions what it is that I actually mean. I hope like
hell that people can see through the many oops’ of my writings to see my
intentions, what motivates me, what I’d give my life for, how deeply I love, how
intensely I want to help everyone who has been handed anything but flowers in
this world.
I guess I can do all of those
things with my heart and still have room to fight Elvira. Write?
