Wojo,
I think, knew or at least understood as my car was never ticketed nor towed. I
think he took on the responsibility of being my surrogate father, waking his
son up each morning to get ready for school. We laughed at Wojo then, a big
reddish man with a walrus mustache and long wild hair. I had not laughed at
Wojo for a long time. We shared a passion for running, not jogging as was the
fad of the day but running. I stopped laughing at him the day he crossed the
finish line at a local marathon, my 14 year old body setting a personal record
of just under 2 and a half hours. I stood at the finish line gasping, catching my
breath feeling the muscles in my body come back to life after being numb from
the exertion. I was cooled, my muscles stiffening, when I saw Wojo come around the corner. The course was 13
miles long and you ran it twice. I had finished my two laps and Wojo was just
finishing his first. I hadn’t known that he ran then and I ran up to him,
surprised by my admiration. He had an easy pace, slow steady and we talked
sporadically and I didn’t even realize that I had gone through another half of
the course.
My
muscles were tearing now I had pushed them too far and told him that while I
enjoyed running with him, I had to stop. He smiled that big drooping mustache
molten with perspiration. He thanked me. Said he didn’t have a team like
everyone else seemed to have. Parents,
friends, family supporting you as you ran, providing you with water, times,
towels. I nodded, I knew what he meant. Told him I’d see him at school on
Monday. And stopped, watching him run on the course a forty year old man proving
to himself that he still had what it takes to take on the world. I turned to
the west, without a team myself, I would have to walk the 15 miles home. My
legs burned and my knees felt like there was gravel underneath my knee caps.
Much later when I would become a “Wojo” I would find out that I had damaged
my knees by not running properly and that the gravel feeling was the loss of
cartilage in my knees. At 14 I would find that I would never be able to run far
enough.
