Pain is Just Weakness Triple-Jumping Out of the Body

I'm headed to Little Rock, Arkansas this weekend for a wedding. I'm excited, as it's an excuse to buy a new suit. Every time I travel there, I'm reminded of an incident back at my first high school, an all-boys joint known as St. Louis Priory. The key piece of information for this story is that at that time, almost every kid took French for a few years.

I was running track as a Freshman, and an intense maniac, a Senior who was the de facto captain of the team, ran up alongside me. He asked me why I wasn't going to make the track meet that weekend, as his primary duty was to intimidate 14 year olds into running faster. I replied that I was headed to Little Rock.

For some reason, he replied that "You know, in French, they call that Petite Rock." I shot back, "No, they'd call it Petite Pierre"* He looked infuriated, and said something to the effect of "Hey Drew, how about you shut the f**k up!"

I think he may have had me run an extra lap or two. But I remember faking like it was really difficult, so, pleased that I'd been sufficiently tortured, he'd let me stop. It was easy to run the additional distance, because at the time I knew that while he was running around a rubber ring that weekend, I'd be wiping the condensation from the ring of a lemonade glass in warm ol' Arkansas. Sucker!!


*Pierre means "rock" in French