The Day That I Gave Up Running For 17 Years.

I used to love to play hide and seek (or haunts as we called it) almost every day up until the age of 10.

Back then it seemed as if I could run forever in the long summer nights that only ended with the sun dying and mother screaming “MATTHEW! GET IN!”.

My love for haunts ended suddenly one night when some local tough guys saw me running through their patch of the hood and came after on their bikes.

They tailed me for about half an hour and did nothing but poke at me and laugh. I was the kid that would always cry a lot. The fucking cry baby. Back then my nickname was ‘Water Works’. The kids would shout shit like.

Aw he’s gonna cry, here comes the water works again from the Water Works.

Anyway on that night I ran into the local video store and tried to hide there for a few minutes but they were waiting for me outside.

The owner quickly threw me out as I was crying and making his store all sweaty. I wanted him to phone the police but he thought it was funny more than anything.

The video store owner was well known in the neighbourhood for selling multicoloured popcorn that would dye your shit all the colours of the rainbow.

He was therefore of ill repute.

The little bastards followed me half way home and continued with their mocking. I kept crying.

At the time it was highly traumatic but thinking back it is all rather funny.

I never played haunts again after that day.

This is formative in my memory for being the time I stopped running regularly, right up until 2010.

I could blame the kids for being mean and making me afraid to run thereby resulting in me becoming fat and depressed in my 20’s but that’s silly.

I should have stood up for myself and screamed ‘fuck off you little arseholes! I will run where I want to!’

That way the angry jogger would have been born 17 years ahead of schedule and I might have actually ran a sub 4 hour marathon by now.

The morale of this rather pointless tale is to never let anyone stop you from doing what you love in life, even if they call you names and tail you on their bikes for an hour or more.

You’ll regret it when you’re fat and old.