Inside Club Loco-Proceed with Caution

 Everyone who was anyone was there. They nonchalantly cruised down the back alley dressed in long trench coats and sunglasses. They played it cool as they each ducked into the back room at Club Loco. As they took off their fedoras, or shrugged off their fake minks, they scoped out the room. All the usual players were there. Guilt, Ego (and her side kick Smooth talker), Anxiety, Impatience and slumped in a corner- Reason. Reason had been working round the clock on several other projects, and though Anxiety was often on those projects as well, Reason seemed to be the only one with bags under her eyes.  

“Alright,” declared Ego as she folded her long thin legs underneath her. She licked her gleaming white teeth, tossed her long golden locks and using her perfectly manicured fingers started pointing to people in the room. “Impatience, what are your thoughts?”

“I think we should do it. Listen, we have been sitting on the couch for three weeks! Three weeks! Do you know how long that is? We are lucky that Anxiety over there is working overtime lately or we’d be as round as a donut by now. Look we rested, we iced, we even stretched; we feel pretty good let’s do it already!”

“Not to mention,” began Guilt as she twisted one of her tight gray curls around her index finger, “We made a commitment to a friend to run. We can’t just leave our friends on the curb. If we commit to running thirteen miles, we run thirteen miles. That’s what friends do. Who can call themselves a friend if they bail out at the last moment?”

Reason made the mistake of opening her mouth, but before she could say anything Ego cut in. “Look at you, you’re a mess Reason. Your hair’s disheveled, your sweatpants are ratty, your face is blotchy and you have something green stuck between your two front teeth. You’re making us look like we’re sixty!”

Smooth Talker piped in then, “Reason, what Ego means is that you have been so darn busy lately, you deserve a break. Why don’t you go take a nap or something? It would do us all some good if you could just loosen up a bit.”

At that moment there was a bold knock on the door. Anxiety’s cousin Fear came sweeping  into the room.

“Absolutely not! We are absolutely not running a half marathon in our condition. Our ankle is just barely healed and we haven’t been training. We could cause permanent damage!”

“And then we wouldn’t be able to run for months,” Reason took this moment to align herself with Fear. Usually she worked to keep Fear at bay, but this time she saw an advantage in this. Unfortunately, Guilt had the same idea and sidled up to Fear with Smooth Talker fast on her heels.

“What if we didn’t run and our friend got mad at us?” Guilt whispered to Fear. Smooth Talker followed Guilt’s lead. “You don’t want to lose a friend over a silly marathon do you?” She asked as she massaged Fear’s shoulders. We’re better than that. We don’t bail on our friends.”

“And we have been bailing on her a lot lately,” Guilt piped in.

Fear began to waiver. The only thing worse than physical pain was emotional pain. What if their friend really did get upset?

Reason stood up and shouted “This is ridiculous! First of all we know our friend better than that. Yes, she might be disappointed, but she won’t be mad. We are putting ourselves at risk here. We are smarter than this. We know better. I don’t think we should do this.”

Ego looked up from filing her nails and with a disinterested sigh she patted the empty spot next to her and invited Reason over. The plush velvet couch was too much for a tired Reason. Though she was apprehensive, she decided the rational thing would be to listen to Ego’s argument.

“We know that rest and recovery are important in training. So let’s consider this injury of ours the rest and recovery. We feel good now. Our body is conditioned for this. Sure, it’s been a few weeks since we ran, but we spent months and months running before this. Maybe we overdid it, but now we are smarter. Anyway people do this all the time. And they’re fine. So now here we are rested and ready to go.”

“Well, maybe we should run it by our physical therapist or our coach,” Reason countered.

“Look we don’t have time for this, okay? Let’s go run this and if we don’t feel great while we are out there we will just quit,” Impatience was already putting her trench coat back on and headed for the back alley.  “End of conversation,” she noted and she slammed the door behind her.

On the morning of the Half Marathon the usual players met at the start line. On the outside they looked like Reason, but on the inside they were powered by Ego. Another player joined the race. Distraction. She was one of Ego’s favorite companions, especially on race day. When Ego felt down, Distraction would work her magic and before they knew it, the event was over.

After the race Ego was in her glory. Even Reason had to admit that everything went well. They were joined by some others including Joy and Hunger. Fear, Anxiety and Guilt must have had a prior engagement because they were nowhere in sight.  For a few blissful hours, Reason, Ego, Distraction and Joy existed in harmony. As the day went on, however, Guilt, Anxiety and Fear returned. Everyone noticed a heavy presence of Anxiety.

 “Something’s not right.” She noted.

 “We’re fine,” Ego countered, but some of her aura had lost its luster. She went to bed early and without much of her usual fanfare.

The day after the race Fear and Anxiety were on high alert.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Guilt scolded the others.

Reason ran her fingers through her hair and sighed, “We might need an X-ray.”

“You’re being overly dramatic,” Ego mumbled through a mouthful of Advil.

“We don’t have time to get an X-ray.” Impatience noted.

“What are we going to do?” Worried Anxiety.

“What are we going to do,” Echoed Fear.

“Write a consequence essay, put our foot on ice, go to sleep and hope that tomorrow all will be well.”
But who said that? Only tomorrow will tell.