Day 30 - Track and Field

There are certain landmark days in every school year: the first day, the last day, the last day before extended breaks, the days with parties, the days based around special events. Today we had one of those at MB when Track and Field Day came up on the schedule.

I'd imagine a lot of adults had their own track and field experiences during childhood. I was just thinking about one of mine on the way into work this morning. For some reason a memory I hadn't thought about in probably thirty years came at me out of nowhere when I thought of the time I was ready to run the 50 yard dash, but was told I couldn't participate because I was wearing soccer cleats and those weren't allowed. This ticked me off since even at 10 years old I knew exactly what had happened: The public school teachers down the road from us who had sooo graciously (you should read that as dripping with sarcasm) invited the constantly-maligned St. Andrews kids from down the road to participate in "their" event hadn't said anything to our teachers about cleats not being allowed, and now they were pulling the rug out from under me. I know this because some of my friends got stuck in the same situation. This is why we would refer to the kids who went to the public elementary schools in town as "Parker Pigs" and Lincoln Stinkins." But enough of my damage.

I always enjoy the idea of track and field day as much as I usually enjoy the execution of it. I referenced this a few days ago in a different post, but it's worth mentioning again: Our Phy. Ed. teacher really sets it up as a major event, and he's got it running like the proverbial well-oiled machine. The only hang-up we usually experience is the dunk tank, which I'm usually co-running. When you have to give an entire grade level worth of girls or boys three turns to hit the target and some of them do (sometimes very often), it's logistically impossible to stay on schedule. The number of softballs I had to chase down and retrieve today alone will guarantee that my knees won't have their full range of motion return until Monday, at the earliest.

As sore as I am right now, I can still say we had a great day. This was especially since I had the foresight to coat my exposed skin in as much SPF 50 as it would hold. I'll spare you the description of how easily I burn and what happened the year I put sunscreen on everywhere except the one rectangular patch on my arm that somehow I missed....