Ok, Who Got Bitten?

Up the Creek

I’ve never really been fit.

I mean, I’m not the sporty type— I don’t play them. At all.

 As a result, some would say I’m lazy. In fact, what most people get wrong about me is that they think I’m lazy.

“Oh, she doesn’t want to play soccer. She must be so lazy.” I can’t blame them. It makes sense, how they’d draw that conclusion.

Some people play soccer.                             
All lazy people do not play soccer.
Sam does not play soccer.
Therefore, Sam is lazy.

But it’s not that. I like running and playing sports. You see, the reason I choose not to exert myself physically is not based on my capabilities. No, it’s based on the fact that any kind of sport I participate in makes me look really stupid.

Let’s say the letter p is the statement “Sam runs” and the letter q is “Sam looks stupid”. Mathematically, the sentence “If Sam runs, then Sam looks stupid” is represented as such:

p —> q

To negate any letter, the tilde (~) can be used.

~p —> ~q :  “If Sam does not run, then Sam does not look stupid”.

There is not, and will never be, the statement:  p —> ~q

I run like an idiot, is what I’m getting at.

So for years I didn’t do much running, or anything remotely close to it. Even when my friends raced ahead of me, challenging that the loser was going to pay, or ride alone, or eat mashed potatoes slathered in the half-frozen, battery-acid liquid the schools decided to call apple juice, I still smiled and trotted along at a brisk pace, not running but sort of power-walking my way after them. All to keep up appearances.

Well, I regret it. Every decision against giving my body the exercise it needed, I regret. As I bent my sore back to fit through the ever-narrowing tunnel, my muscles screamed, my legs wobbly and sore. I got tired so damn easily.

My shoulders were the biggest hassle. The tunnel’s diameter just barely exceeded the length of my shoulders, but very barely. I had to hunch them in an awkward way as I scrabbled forward to squeeze through. And if I thought the act of running made me look idiotic, this took the cake.

I slid ahead, my hands squelching in a viscous sludge, the water running into mud and decaying plant material. I groaned at the slimy, cold touch, but was grateful that it wasn’t poo.

It was freezing down here. The steamy and humid air up near the surface which had made me sweat buckets before now seemed like a welcome paradise compared to this. I was wet and shivering, my exposed flesh prickling with goose bumps, teeth starting to chatter. My skin crusted with dirt and blood, caked with the stuff. I felt encased in a shell of it, and it only got worse as the muck began to pile higher. Now it was as if I was swimming through jelly.

I’ve never been claustrophobic, but the tight space and complete darkness was really starting to get to me. It felt like the walls were compressing, like at any moment the earth above me would collapse and seal me in here. Like I’d starve to death knee-deep in this nasty soup, left alone. I was Fortunato— very unfortunate.

I thought about turning around. I felt the mud squish around in my shoes, the stuff getting under my nails, the dark tunnel with no end in sight— maybe it would be a dead end, keep getting smaller and smaller until I was stuck, and what then would I do? — and stopped moving forward.

“Alright Sam,” I said in a breathy whisper, my voice sounding small and weak. Shaky. “You can do this. There’s no way this place is going to collapse. You’re being dumb. Just turn around and maybe you can sneak past the zombies and regroup with— ”