TheBanyanTree: rowing

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Quoting Laura Hicks <wolfljsh at gmail.com>:

> On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 12:06 PM, Teague, Julie Anna
> <jateague at indiana.edu>wrote:
>
>> Dave, as I mentioned, a very experienced rower, said that he, too, had to
>> stay pretty focused and then quoted Stephen Crane, of the men rowing in the
>> open boat out on the ocean, "None of them knew the color of the sky."  In
>> that moment, the words were so evocative.
>
>
> So I guess he's forgiven for not getting the Monty Python reference?

ha ha ha!  As long as a person can quote someone other than Homer 
Simpson, I can hang with them as a running buddy.  You've got to be 
able to talk about something on a ten mile run.  My best running buddy, 
Tanya, is out of commission with a stress fracture in her foot.  And 
she's a wonderful running buddy, but God love her, she reads mostly 
trashy fiction, has dubious taste in movies, and doesn't go in much for 
current events or politics as discussion topics.  But she's a woman, 
so, you know, we can talk about our periods for ten miles.  KIDDING.  
Tanya and I have made it through twenty six miles together, and all the 
training miles getting to that point, without having read a single book 
in common (until she coerced me into reading "Outlander", which we, in 
the end, agreed to disagree on). We manage a comfortable silence at 
times.  With running buddy Dave, on the other hand, we usually run out 
of miles before we run out of things to discuss. So the miles speed by, 
and that's a good thing.  Dave has bred an entire family of 
over-achievers who would not know a Monty Python if it bit them on the 
arse, so to speak, but who are all now at Harvard or they are twelve 
years old and on the verge of becoming world-renowned violin virtuosos.

And speaking of spewing literary quotes, my darling younger son--the 
one who nearly flunked out of high school because he didn't do any of 
the homework whatsoever (he didn't need to, he figured, since he 
already knew the material) and who is now in community college trying 
to prove that he is as smart as he actually is--quoted Sophocles to me 
the other day.  "An unexamined life is not worth living," he tells me, 
"Discuss."  Funny kid, that one.  He got an A+ on his first philosophy 
test.  If college can manage to keep him entertained, he might deign to 
do the work.