There are no baby pandas on my running course.
I guess I’ve known this all along, the sad truth lodged deep in the back of my head in the pile of stuff you don’t want to acknowledge, sitting there with “Maybe MmmBop isn’t that great of a song after all” and “What if Belichick really IS the antichrist and a Patriots Super Bowl win will signal the start of the apocolypse.” Things you suspect but fear to think about much.
But today my defenses were down. I went out to test the sea legs while deep in the throes of the grunge. The neighborhood loop brought me the same joy you have when you’re in a hurry at the 10 items or less lane and the customer ahead of you thought it said “100” items or less. (And yes, it should be fewer. Damn copy editors.)
Then it hit me. I had just watched a particularly downbeat newscast. Many bad things happened recently, most of them with video. But at the end of the newscast, they showed totally pointless footage of a baby panda. Suddenly, all was well with the world.
So I’m running this loop and feeling like crap. I’m hoping I get hit by the postal truck so I will have a “not rain nor sleep nor running over a slow guy” story. But nothing. But what if, at the mile marker, a baby panda was munching on a bamboo stalk? That would be a glorious run indeed. Even with tire tracks.
But, no. One dog, a couple of startled cats, a woman with an electric mower. No inspiration.
Maybe that’s been my problem all along. I never really cared much for running. I was just in it to see a baby panda. Now that I finally realize it’s not going to happen, I’m done.
Oh, well. I guess it doesn’t matter much. The Patriots will win in a couple of weeks and the world will end anyhow.
I hope baby pandas get to go to heaven. Jury still out on the Hanson Brothers …
* It’s just fun to say “debunked,” no?
i like margarine 
Can’t debunk any of it. (Heehee – I got to say it!) For I, too, saw the pointless baby pandas this morning, and I, too, lobby for the correct usage of “fewer” in the express lane. I’m no copy editor, but I did have the feared Mrs. Coffee (I kid you not) for AP English class in high school.
But there should be SOME joy in seeing the dog and the startled cats. Esp if it was the dog who startled the cats. Then all would be right with the world.
I got nuttin……cept a bad panda bear joke. A panda bear walked into a resturant in China and killed a family, the headlines read, Panda Bear, eats shuttes and leaves.
I thought you meant “debonked”