Running on prayer

It is early Saturday morning deep in mid-summer and I am lacing up my shoes in the locker room at the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association before a long run. If someone were to look up the word “bliss” in a dictionary, my smiling face might well appear as the definition.

Enter the blister. A rather puffy, swollen fellow appears suddenly at the neighbouring locker sporting a t-shirt that says “Running Sucks.”

Far away from political controversy, social contention, natural catastrophe and assorted causes of anxiety and tension, human beings still find ways to be on different sides. Sigh.

“Is your t-shirt a classic example of post-modern irony or does it really express your true sentiments,” I ask. Or words to that effect.

“Urrgll,” he responds.