Run like fun.

This new Embarkment of Exercise has required some cardio every second day. To tell you the truth, I'm totally struggling with it, I'm just really totally uncomfortable with jogging, it totally goes against The Perfection Of Slothly Sitting I've been training for the last ten years.

But this wasn't always the case..

[CUE MOTHERFREAKIN' REMEMBERING FADEOUT BLACK AND WHITE BIT NOW]

My mates and I spent our entire before school, little lunch, lunch, after school playing games and generally outdoing each other in all things. I spent pretty much the last three years completely caked in dirt and grass stainy.

On this particular lunchtime that the motherfreakin' remembering fadeout bit landed on, we were playing cricket. We only had a tennis ball so to get the dude out you had to catch the ball and then chock the batter dude in the back of the neck with the ball before he made it back to home. The batsman would therefore aim to slog the ball into the trees. If the batsman got it past the trees and over the barb-wire fence onto the neighbouring sportsground then he was out because we weren't allowed out of schoolgrounds.

When it did go over the fence, I'd always volunteer to go fetch. Our grounds were higher than next doors and so it was heaps easy to get over. There was even a poorly mended section that I could run and jump over. Getting back was much much harder and required some tree climbing and massive leaping.

There were big bushes next door and so I was struggling to find our ball. Alex climbed over to help and looked in a whole different section, but it wasn't long before he sprinted way past me, closely followed by some dudes in our year level chasing him on the other side of the fence throwing rocks and sticks. Alex was going to have a tough time of it, he was heading for a sparce part of the grounds with only one good tree, he was going to need a totally big headstart.
I had been behind some bushes looking for the ball and so did some mighty fine crouching while I figured out what to do. Unfortunately, sticks and stones to break my bones landed all round me. Damn.

Bullying wasn't really a problem at our school, but these dudes got all Lord of the Flies on us this one time. I started running the opposite direction from Alex, hoping to split them up and bore them with the running and chasing.

They did not get bored.

I was in a tight spot.

Being outside the school grounds was big trouble and my chances of being busted by a patrolling teacher too freakin' good.

Everytime I paused, projectiles of all sorts were launched at me and soon I was running out of grounds. I decided to exit the next door sports grounds and cross the road to the park opposite. I had run out of good trees to climb back over and so my only option was the main gates. The main gates were for cars, so they could drive for a kilometre or so, go round the roundabout drive a bit more and park near the offices.

I was hiding around some bushes in the park opposite, I was across a big main road so I didn't have to worry about rocks, but being busted this far from the school would have sucked. Also lunchtime was nearly over, I was pretty well screwed. There were 6 dudes all yelling and looking for me, but they didn't leave the school boundaries.

I popped out of the bushes across the road from the main gate and they saw me and sprinted to intercept. I had to cross a big road, a hilly grassy median strip and another road and only just beat them to the gate.

I was heaps tired, I had run much further than these footy and soccer stars and had to dodge a whole heap of rocks when I came through the gate. We were all now two full football ovals away from our classroom and the first bell had sounded. The chase was on.

I was always superquick at sprinting but distance I had no interest in. I didn't know what these dudes were going to do, but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be good. Not one to let myself get bullied, I wasn't going to make it easy.

They all gave chase. One dude caught up right beside me. He didn't try and grab me but was looking at my feet. I had no clues until he tried to soccer slide at me to trip me up. Since he projected so damn much I just jumped over and kept running.

Other dudes came close but all those Saturday mornings of weaving around the Queens Victoria market crowds provided the mad skillz to get around little kids quicker.

Eventually I made it to the main school bit before the second bell. I was wreaked and slowed to a walk. Before I got too far, one of the dudes, grabbed me and held me. I asked him what he was doing and he just ignored me and looked back the way we came. Soon all the other dudes rocked up and surrounded me.

"Why run away?"
"'Cos you were chucking rocks."
"Yeah, that's 'cos you were running."

The second bell rang and we all had to go to class. They let go and with all the menacing their exhausted bodies could muster left me with chilling murmurs of 'don't run next time.'

That second bell changed everything, the UN really should just get some school bells all over the shop and tell conflicting countries to get to class.

My next subject was with the soccer dude and I was all like 'haha dude, you missed' and he was all 'yeah mate, I tried to chop you and you bounced away like a bunny rabbit.' Thinking about it later I was impressed at his quickness of reducing my supreme athletic evasion to something cute and fluffy.

Alex told me what happened to him but I don't remember. I do remember that we never found that tennis ball.