from the VAULT
My wife’s family has been doing Family Fun Day for decades.
Good food. Music. Drinks. Kids running around. Everybody posted up in the park having a good time.
And then, at some point, the feats of strength begin.
Running races. Potato sack races. Musical chairs. All the traditional Family Fun Day nonsense.
Except these people take this shit seriously.
You would think Olympic qualification was on the line.
The kids are obviously competitive, but it’s the grown people that make it hilarious. The 40s, 50s and up crowd still trying to prove they got the chops. Nobody wants to get smoked by somebody twenty years younger than them.
I know because I used to participate.
Twenty years ago, before MS, I ran these races too.
I’ve seen my wife’s cousin slip in the grass and take out another cousin, some poor girl and two kids on the way down.
Bodies everywhere.
Family Fun Day.
We also have family friends who come every year and bring their kids, so it becomes this whole big mix of cousins, friends, kids, everybody.
So this year the races start getting organized and one of the younger kids comes over to me.
“You running?”
I looked at him.
“Hells to the no.”
Nothing against the kid. Great kid. He has no reason to know what my body can or can’t do.
It was just the idea of me lining up for a foot race that got me and one of my wife’s friends laughing.
Because there are not a lot of times where I can say this, but in that particular moment?
I was pretty happy to have MS.
Nobody could pressure me.
Nobody could hit me with, “Come on, man, just do one.”
Nobody could accuse me of being lazy.
I have a medically documented, completely legitimate exemption from Family Fun Day Olympic qualification.
Beautiful.
So while everybody else was working their legs, I focused on my own training program.
Forearms.
Drink curls.
My friend’s cup started getting low.
“Your weight looking a little light.”
Top-up.
Another set.
My cup gets low.
She fills mine.
“Okay. Time for another set.”
Curl.
Sip.
Recover.
Excellent form.
This went on for a while.
Meanwhile people are sprinting across the grass, trying not to pull hamstrings, defending family honour and proving they still have speed.
Me?
I stayed disciplined.
Forearm work only.
MS takes a lot.
It closes plenty of doors I would much rather walk through.
But every once in a while, this ridiculous disease looks at something I absolutely did not want to do anyway and says:
Don’t worry, man.
I got you.