The Bronx

I have some advice for Marathon spectators that wish to be helpful by handing our water, towels, candy bars, or whatnot as runners stumble past: forget bananas. Some guy decided to purchase the entire GNP of Costa Rica and hand it out in the Bronx just past the (whatchootalkinbout) Willis Avenue Bridge, and I innocently decided to grab one. Unfortunately, I failed to recall my Cartoon Boobytraps 101 class from second grade as I maintained my line down the edge of the road. A couple of near-disastersteps later amidst a massive pile of trampled banana peels, I found myself at a dead stop on the sidewalk, cursing the concept of such a dangerous high-potassium fruit. That guy couldn't have more effectively tried to sabotage my race had he painted a hole in the street.

At least I had the banana. I started running again, peeling it as I trotted along, thinking that now, free of manufactured road hazards, I might at least enjoy me some sweet tropicality. Presciently, I recalled Sister Carmen's fourth-grade alternate nightmare across the hall from Miss Meehan's happy homeroom and how she'd check student lunchbags before they were discarded to confirm that all food had been eaten. Recess lore held that poor Nicky Snider had been forced to eat a brown, potentially rotting banana absentmindedly packed by his mother, while the rest of the terror-stricken class watched, in the name of starving children in Uzbekistan, or wherever.

Sergeant Carmen was one sadistic bitch.

I looked at my shiny new banana again.

OK.

Worst. Banana. Ever.

I pulled to a corner at some intersection and yakked out the half-chewed vileness, as some kid in my periphery reacted with a preadolecent "Ewwww!" and buried his head in his mother's coat. You have no idea, kid. I can only hope that he learned the lesson that he should never EVER take anything from strangers, especially strangers that seem friendly. The nice ones are the most dangerous.

And leaving that unsavory incident on the sidewalk (and in a garbage can- no one would be slipping on MY banana peel), I found we were nearly headed back into Manhattan. The race only runs through The Bronx for a brief mile or so. The route reminds me of oldsters in a mobile home that are trying to visit all 50 states, and as such get out of the RV long enough to say, "Ok, we've been to North Dakota." Maybe they stop at a diner and have a cup of coffee. Then they find another place that feels more like someplace. Not that I disliked The Bronx- I'd run this route before, and haven't had to dodge a single bullet. I like the bridges- they're frequent and short. Mostly I like the name, though. The use of definite articles in reference to place- The Ohio State University, The Netherlands (The Noplace?), The Fire Swamp, etc- announces that this is THE Bronx, and all other Bronxes out there (if they have the audacity to call themselves Bronx) merely share the same name and are inherently subordinate. The implication, I think, is that you will remember this place when you're gone.

I will remember the Third Avenue Bridge. Crowd noise dropped to a whisper as we climbed the approach, roughly six miles from the finish. Suddenly, we were a mass of a thousand people running through North Dakota, with only the sounds of our feet on the grated metal bridge surface. I looked up through the silence to see Midtown's skyscrapers resolving in the distance, the jagged horizon buried behind a low-rise sea in the foreground. I shouted:

"Why's everyone so quiet!?"

A halfhearted cheer arose from runners adjacent. My foot planted on the downward arc of the bridge curvature on the Manhattan side and noise from the Harlem crowd began to seep into the air. This is not a wall, I thought. This is a gateway.

My strides grew more regular.

I remembered how to smile.

I would be finishing this race.