Crash

My training has totally crashed. As I type this, one of my co-workers, Bad Katie Jones, is running the Viking Half Marathon. I had hoped to run it with her. Not only that, but I had recently taken a composition notebook and filled up two full pages of dreams: adventure runs, journey runs, and athletic challenges. Now I am lying in bed, sick, and wondering when I will be back at it.

At least it was not injury that brought me down. That is usually what happens. I have, however, become more healthy over the years. But when I do break down, it often last for years. My last breakdown lasted two years. The one before that lasted four years. You read that right. Jerk six years from an old man and you have taken a good chunk of his remaining life.

I don't have two to four more years to give up. At sixty-four years of age, I am in the twilight of my athletic play. I was thinking of next Friday catching a ride north with someone who works in Clarksdale and getting out at Minter City. That is one of the runs in my notebook.

All of this shutdown started when my wife got that thing, that thing that has turned our world upside down. She got sick and not wanting her to outdo me, I got sick to. My symptoms are fever, coughing, soreness, and cloudy headedness. When I stand up, my eyes want to cross and I am foggy headed. I want to go to sleep immediately. Sleeping, however, has proved to be an illusive luxury. When I have managed to drift off, Penny always comes into the room and with a loud voice starts asking questions.

Speaking of the soreness, my skin is so sore that I don't want to move. Not moving, however, is not an option unless you can sleep. Penny has a sixth sense about my sleeping. She always has. If I doze off, she is not going to suffer it.

I have not been tested. My doctor said, "Get a test if you want, but we are going to start treating you." I had intended to get tested Friday, but I did not want to leave the house, did not feel well enough to go out the door. I face the same dilemma today.

So here I am, watching my dreams go up in smoke. One silver lining to all of this, however, is I will probably survive the semester. Teaching forty-two semester hours was literally killing me. Literally. I am not exaggerating. So I am not afraid of COVID. If it did not strike, the job would have done me in. Now I will be teaching everything once for a week or two so maybe I can get caught up, survive.

I fear I will never be as good of a teacher as I was. The shock of this semester showed me that I was not willing to die for my students or for my job. I might not have had a choice, but I was beginning to fight back in small ways. Now I wonder if I will ever really push again. 

Maybe all of this is the shock I needed to convince me to retire. I don't know. The administration seems to want as many of us gone as possible. Part of me want to not let them win. But another part of me wants to sing that Johnny Paycheck song, "Take This Job and Shove It." With our country on the brink of socialism, however, I question the wisdom of retiring. It won't take long for things to get bad. Then it will be too late for old men to start new low-paying jobs to get by. God help us because man is not the answer.