The Turkey Trot Almost Killed Me

Doctor Franzia8 years ago

Gasping like a dying beached whale, I lay in a muddy ditch on the side of the road. I was dressed in a filthy black morph suit and a sopping Santa thong a size too small that pushed my balls in different directions down the side of my leg.

“Mommy, what’s wrong with that man?” some kid in a turkey hat asked.

I rolled over and vomited all over myself.

“Oh he probably just had a little too much stuffing,” chuckled the kid’s fucking dad, like the gutless suburban dentist he probably was.

They trotted away, joining the mob of happy Turkey Day runners that do shit like this to fill the primal void in their lives because robots fight all our wars for us.

I coughed, feeling like I had licked the clammy grundle of Death.

Earlier that morning, I was deep in post-Whiskey Wednesday sleep off when my mom came into my room with a bullhorn she got at Spencers.

“Gobble gobble gobble! Time to get up!”

I groaned and pulled the pillow over my head.

“Come on, sweetie. We’re going to do a Turkey Trot.”

I opened my eyes and glanced out the window. It was raining sheets and my phone said we were looking at low-40s.

“Hard fucking pass.”

My dad leaned in.

“Get up, get a costume on, and stop being such a little bitch or we’re not paying your student loans anymore.”

This is why I don’t like going home.

An hour later but still pre-9 a.m., I was on a high school track, sipping hot chocolate that tasted like it came out of a moose’s ass. I lined up in the mass of runners, all wet and cold like me, but minus the hangover. They were so cheerful. Getting old must be terrible.

The starting alarm went off, and I took off in a full sprint with the serious runners. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep that up, but I wanted to look good at the starting point. So I’m running along for a little bit, and I’m thinking to myself, hey, for being a fat old fuck who hasn’t run sober in at least seven months, I’m actually keeping up a pretty good pace.

Twenty seconds later, I’m breathing like an asthmatic chainsmoker on the verge of death. Mother Nature was hitting me with sheets of rain like being slapped in the face by a cold, wet dick (I have some repressed issues from high school swim team).

A little kid ran past me and I was like, “Hey, body, whatadya say we get it together enough to at least outrun an eight-year-old?”

My body says back, “That’s an enticing offer. I’m gonna to counter with ‘fuck you’.”

My lungs immediately go into full collapse and dagger-cramps shoot down my side. My Santa thong was soaked through and the chafing was beginning. My running shoes were starting to draw blood like horny vampires. I was desperately looking for a way out.

The course went around this bend and doubled back on itself. There was a cop and a super enthusiastic asshole in a turkey costume. I gave him a high five and turned around, cutting off like two miles from the race. Suddenly, I was back up on top with the people with $400 thermal tights and the sinewy legs of somebody who has an accurate count of their daily calorie intake.

That’s when I saw him: another dude, better looking than me, in better shape than me, and wearing the colors of my hated rival school. A seething fire burned up from my insides, and this time it wasn’t the runs. I didn’t care what happened to me anymore. This fucker needed to be destroyed.

I summoned up every last ounce of hangover rage and charged forward like a glorious, leaping stallion, my Santa thong flapping freely in the wind. I cruised past the guy in a hot blast of majesty, and yelled in a deafening stadium rasp:

“HEY, YOUR TEAM FUCKING SUCKS!”

He looked up from his Beats wireless headphones, startled. I flipped him the middle finger and kept running until he was nothing but dust and memories.

Just kidding. The dude was a lot faster than me and came up behind me in less than a second. He dropped ass like an Olympian and took off so there was no way I could ever catch him. But not before he smiled and whispered, “You guys are three and eight.”

“Fuckkk,” I gasped.

My body poked me.

“Hey, friend. Remember that deal I offered you earlier? Well I like you so much, I’m going to throw in another shot of ‘fuck you’ and a special order of ‘suck on this dick, because you’re going down, player’ ABSOLUTELY FREE!”

“What? Oh shi–”

My gut contorted like a Russian porn star and I hit the ground hard, rolling into a muddy ditch on the side of the street.

I heaved and gasped and threw up on myself. I ended up closing in on 45 minutes when I finally dragged myself to the finish.

My parents were already there.

“Honey, it might be time to talk about your drinking…”

“Forget about it,” my dad said. “He just needs to exercise more. Let’s go eat 10,000 calories.”

I slumped into a miserable, vomit stain in the backseat.

Fuck Turkey Trots..

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