Once Upon a Midnight Run

HINDSIGHT has a way of kicking itself smack between the eyes. And I swear it always occur the morning after, while one’s hangover makes a haze of sunrise.

Early last week, I woke up with my legs’ muscles and my soles screaming for a massage. My buddy Jeremiah and I might as well have rushed headlong to hell, throwing caution to the wind after sousing up at our hangout (our beer bottles sloshing as we whooped up the DVD of a concert in tribute of Burt Bacharach’s music).

Let’s see how far your story holds, or so he challenged me behind his steering wheel en route to where he was supposed to drop me off so I could take the jeepney homeward. That I fancied myself a long-distance runner way back in high school sounded like a tall tale to him, considering my present sedentary demeanor in stark contrast to his manic knack for athletics (particularly basketball).

Outrun each other through the Marcelo Fernan Bridge (spanning the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu), we agreed. In the middle of the night, for Cerberus' sake!

And so I took off my shoes and my socks so I could dash away like I used to, raring to prove him bluffing isn’t my bottle of beer. He sprinted off ahead of me as soon as he got down the car— and who cared if he was still wearing his office uniform?-- and I followed suit, barefoot and basking in the velocity that could have been the bats’ joy at such ungodly hour. Around us, the darkness was no match to our breathless bravado against the halogen lamps at the bridge ahead of us.

What were we up to, I could only imagine the motorists wondering as they wheeled by. What were we running after? And what if a police patrol or a gang of cutthroats happened to see us?

Though Jeremiah had to concede my lungs can still take an extra mile (and he had to drive me home as a payoff of sorts), he called me the day after and we agreed it was crazy of us to risk cardiac arrest. My wife, of course, was not amused when I told her. Not even if I had to hang my tongue out to the devil by stressing that running was swell. And never mind if I had to swear, with my feet on my mouth and my hand raring to raise another bottle of beer.