If I lose the devil gets my soul.

June 19, 2007 – 9:32 pm |

I’m solidly in my thirties.  By the time a person reaches her thirties she really should have a pretty good understanding of the effects of alcohol on one’s reasoning skills and decision-making abilities.  At this advanced age, I should know better than to make any important choices after three gin and tonics, two glasses of wine, and a delicious, indulgent piece of dreamy lemon-filled cake.  After all, isn’t this a lesson (or at least a version of a lesson) that I learned in my twenties after surviving the poor choices made on the heels of two bottles of Strawberry Boone’s Farm and several cups of keg beer? 

Saturday night we sent the kids to their grandparents’ house so that we could attend a friend’s wedding.  I threw on my newly purchased, but not-quite-as-little-as-I’d-hoped, black dress and off we went, giddy and excited about our date.  The wedding and reception were truly lovely, combining all the elements that make these things a success – happy couple, surrounded by supportive friends, gorgeous flowers, good music, beautiful weather.  Open Bar.    

I woke up on Sunday, head pounding slightly.  I groaned, rolled over and fumbled for my glasses.  I sat up and sucked down half of the bottle of warm water left on my nightstand from the night before.  I should get up and take an Advil.  I thought.  Ugh.  Later.   I flopped back down and pulled the covers up to my chin.  I closed my eyes as visions of the night before took turns creeping into my morning after consciousness.   I flipped through and reviewed the mental images.   There were plenty of deep conversations along the we-should-get-together-more-often-I-just-love-you line.  My mental slideshow paused on a rather unsettling visual of myself playing the air fiddle on The Devil Went Down to Georgia.  But, I was just about to tally up the embarrassment points, swallow my pride with my Advil and surrender any remorse when the recollection set in that made my gut wrench.

I poked at my husband.  “Are you awake?” 
“Am now,” he groaned.
“Hey, last night, I didn’t really say I’d ….” 
“Yes,” he said. “You really did.”
“Why didn’t you stop me?”  I begged furiously. “How could you let me commit to something like this?” 
“I tried, but there was no reasoning with you,”  he replied.   

My friend D, only a few weeks post-partum on child number two, had turned up for the wedding looking as cute as could be in a strappy sundress.  “What’s your secret?” I’d asked jealously as I fiddled with the straw on my third or tenth mixed drink and shoveled in a bite of someone else’s lonely, unfinished piece of lemon wedding cake.  “How are you getting back in shape so quickly?”

It was a legitimate question.   It’s been two years since my last kid was born, and I’m still several pounds up and awkwardly fending off embarrassed well-wishers who have innocently inquired about my due date.  She’s barely checked out of the hospital, and she looks like she walked off the pages of the latest Ann Taylor catalog.

“I decided to run a ten mile race this fall,” she said excitedly, “and I have been running to get in shape for it.”

“What a great idea, good for you.” I exclaimed, chewing, drinking and nodding in emphatic girl-power support.

And then … The gauntlet.  The challenge.  The goal.

“You know what!”  D blurted enthusiastically, “you should totally run it with me!  That would so much fun.”   

In case you were hoping for something far more risqué than tales of running, and in case you are now asking yourself what the big deal is and where this is going, let me interject and explain.  I hate to run.  I hate it.  I hate running with the same kind of fervent passion that some people reserve for hating Republicans or dentists or bill collectors. Some people say they find running to be a good opportunity to think, but when I run I play the same exact thought over and over on the repeat function of my mind.  RUNNING SURE SUCKS.  I HATE TO RUN.  RUNNING SURE SUCKS.  I HATE TO RUN.  

In fact, running and I have a long history of mutual hatred.  In junior high and high school, when we had to run THE MILE for the Presidential Fitness portion of gym class, I always came in fourth to last.  Behind me were the two goth girls who covered themselves in black and walked slowly around the track in protest of the man and his stupid gym class, and the skinny kid from cross country who was behind me because he’d lapped me in his second mile that he was tacking on just for fun.  The worst part is that I was actually trying, and yet I was still lucky if I finished THE MILE in less than 12 minutes. 

“Oh, really?  I don’t know,”  I said to D, intrigued and excited in my deluded drunken happiness, but still non-committal.   At some point, my husband raised an eyebrow at me. “That would be awesome if you did it, but ten miles is kind of far,” he cautioned. “You hate to run.”

“NO! It’ll be great!” encouraged D, partially convincing herself, I think. “We can do this.”

“Well,” I said, gaining excitement, “I do sometimes do better when I have a specific goal.”

“Oh, Totally! You should do it,” D repeated. “It’ll be great!”   

It will, I thought.  It will be great.  Everything is great.  Life is wonderful, and I am going to do this.  I confirmed my promise to participate, and I believe we may have celebrated with a drink and some cake and a lengthy discussion about how we should hang out more often because we totally love each other.

Ok, so I exaggerate a bit, and I probably could have backed out on Sunday morning with few, if any, ramifications.  But, as much as I hate to run, I do love a goal.  I do love the idea of achieving something healthy in this, my tenth year of marriage and my thirty-somethingth year of life, a year in which I lost my grandmother to a life of complications with Type II diabetes, a common family issue.  I love the idea of achieving a shared purpose with a good friend.  And, of course, I love the irony that it may turn out one of the healthiest choices I’ve ever made was liquor-induced – a sure sign that I’m getting old.  I love all of that, but, unfortunately, I do not love to run, so this could be interesting.

I’ll keep you informed.   In the meantime, please – to the comments with encouragement or discouragement or training ideas or, if you’re so inclined, your own stories about hazy drunken choices.  I am guessing you all probably have something more exciting to share.