I Shouldn’t Be Alive |

I recently posted with the subject heading “I shouldn’t be alive…”

It was meant to be funny, based on the TV show of the same name. Granted, most of the people who appear in that show have real stories that back up the claim…while mine, though real, was not necessarily life-threatening.

It got me to thinking, though, writing that post, about what our culture promotes. What types of stories we tell one another.

The stories on the show “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” are usually very grim. And the ones I’ve seen have all been stories about survival occurring due to luck or chance.

That’s a different mentality than the story of a person who survives because they know how to.

In Wade Davis’ TED talk he tells the story an Inuit man named Olayek told him. Olayek’s grandfather was not interested in relocating to the settlement the Canadian government was trying to put the Inuit on. The family were worried for the grandfather’s life. They were afraid that the Canadian government might try to force him to move. If the grandfather rebelled violently, they might kill him. So they did the only thing they could think to do – they took away all of his belongings. Wade tells the rest as follows:

“The Inuit did not fear the cold, they took advantage of it…so, this man’ts grandfather was not intimidated by the arctic night or the blizzard that was blowing, he simply slipped outside, pulled down his sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. And as the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of a blade. He put a string of saliva on the end of the shit-knife, and as it finally froze solid, he butchered a dog with it. He skinned the dog and improvised a harness. Took the ribcage of the dog and improvised a sled. Harnessed up an adjacent dog, and disappeared over the ice floes, shit knife in belt. Talk about getting by with nothing.”

Now that’s ingenuity!

One of my most favorite “playful thinkers” of all time is Bugs Bunny. That rabbit always plays. Every other episode featuring Bugs starts off with him singing a carefree song.

When trouble comes around, it’s no worry. It’s a game. Some of the funniest scenes are where it actually gets serious, and Bugs hightails it out of there! You don’t see cartoons like that nowadays…at least, I haven’t. Everything’s loaded with seriousness or innuendo. No ingenious characters, who approach every problem with a light heart, and the power of their quick wit.

As Wade Davis points out, what changes people, and in turn, what changes societies, are the stories they tell to themselves, or to one another.

What stories are you telling yourself, and those around you?

What stories are you being told?

What story do you want to tell or be told?

It all started when my buddy Charlie said to me [film cuts to show actor-Charlie, talking to Josh casually over a beer]

Hey, let’s run to Tiburon next week. I mapped it out. It’s 14 miles. We can start at the Golden Gate Bridge, and then take the ferry back.

[cut back to Josh]

I just said “Hell yeah.” But then I thought about it. That’s 5 miles further than my furthest run yet. Is that too much?

All of my friends said I was totally nuts. [cut to friend talking to Josh] “You know, you’re only supposed to add like 10% a week to your run distance.”

[cut back]

But I was like, how do I know what I’m capable of, till I try it?

The run started out well enough. We jogged over the bridge, down into Sausalito. We stopped at a local grocery store to get some water, and an energy bar.

That’s when things went horribly wrong.

Charlie asked the lady behind the counter the best way to run over to Tiburon. [cut to checkout lady] “Go up to the light and then hang a left, and go under the freeway. You’ll run up the hill, and the trail is up there.”

Okay, we thought. No problem!

Off we went, jogging under the freeway, as directed, and into a housing project. We could’ve got mugged or shot. But there was no one around who wanted to shoot us, so it didn’t go down like that. So that was a close call.

We jogged up a very steep hill, and ended up walking half of it. As we were coming down, we saw a guy working on his car. Charlie asked him [cut to Charlie-actor asking guy-working-on-car-actor] “Do you know how to get to the path that leads to Tiburon?”

The guy laughed a little, and said “Well, Tiburon is that way.” pointing back the way we had come. We stared at each other for a second, then started running back the way we had come.

As we were running down the hill, the cops drove by us…one…two…three times. They looked at us each time, but never stopped, or talked to us. They could’ve shot us. That was close. Two near-shootings in one day. I was exhausted.

Back down the hill, and under the freeway, we made it back to the path we’d been on to begin with. We ran flat out for a while, finally coming to rest at a little park. You see, we both were seizing up around the legs. Not just the hips. Yes, those were seizing up. But also the quads, the hamstrings, the TFL, the calves, the anterior tibialii. Everything was seizing up. We could’ve seized up right there! None of those soccer moms probably knew how to relieve seized up legs. We would’ve died on the spot!

We stretched out for a bit, then started off again. We ran into this ridiculous neighborhood. The streets were all on hills. Like some kind of Dr. Seuss book. But it was a ghost town. We didn’t see any people at all. I just thought…”Man, if one of us sprains an ankle, we’ll die here.” It was serious.

By the time we got out of that neighborhood, neither of us could run anymore. That was the 11.5 mile mark. We still had a good 3.5 miles to go. What the hell were we going to do?!

Of course, we were both pleased that we’d exceeded our previous distance by almost 20%! Awesome!

Anyway…there we were. The longer we walked, the more our legs seized up. I felt like my skin-suit had shrunk on my whole body…I couldn’t lift my arms over my head…my legs felt like rusty two-by-fours…my left knee felt like it had a curling iron on it…my feet felt like somebody had eaten them and then put them back on my legs…

Yeah. If it doesn’t make sense to you, then you know how I felt!

At that point, we easily could’ve spontaneously combusted. In fact, Charlie did, once, but he got better. We kept walking, but the worst was yet to come.

If you’ve ever been to the San Francisco Bay area in the months of January-December, you’re probably familiar with something called “wind.” As the sun goes down, the air becomes frigid, and the wind kicks up. All at the same time. It’s like a Vampire’s wet dream. Because it happens fast, too. I mean, one second it’s nice and sunny, and the next it’s dark and windy, and cold, and God is laughing at you. He says He’s laughing with you. But he’s lying when he says that. He’s not.

Well, that happened to us. We both were wearing only t-shirts and shorts. That wind felt like being dragged on a cold wet beach backward by a helicopter. Oh yeah, because there was a bunch of sand on the path. So everytime the wind blew, it gave us exfoliation. Free exfoliation was nice. But hypothermia sucks.

And that’s where I knew we were going to die. We were both walking like we were competing for the role of the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. We were becoming delirious, singing hair-rock songs really loud, and doing chorused guitar parts. I knew death was breathing on our necks.

It seemed like it took forever to get to Tiburon. At one point, Charlie looked at me and said [cut to Charlie looking at Josh and saying] “I just hit the Wall.”

If you’ve ever done something you didn’t think was physically possible for you, you know what that means. If not, imagine walking into a wall with your face. It feels like that. And you have to keep doing it.

But we finally got there! We were freezing! We walked into the grocery store and asked when the last ferry was. The guy said “Check the paper.” and pointed to a stack of papers at the end of the checkout counter [cut to guy pointing and mouthing the words "check the paper"].

Well, we were in luck! The last ferry wasn’t till 8:05, and it was now only 6:45! We had time!

You see, neither of us brought a phone. And we hadn’t checked the ferry times before leaving. We realized this around the time we started walking. But nobody wanted to talk about it. It’s like the time somebody in your family farted at Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah. Nobody wants to talk about it.

I still wasn’t convinced we’d make it out alive. And boy was I right!

We ate a pizza and drank beers at the local pizza shop, which helped to numb the pain. Then, got onto the ferry. But there were no life-jackets. And we hit an iceberg, or a giant wave. And it splashed on the boat. Close call.

When we landed at Pier 54 I leaped off the boat and kissed the ground. OH HALLELUJAH!

But the worst was yet to come.

It was about 10 degrees in SF at that point. And the beer was wearing off. We were trying to catch a cab in the only city in America that, as Eddie Izzard points out, has only 5 cabs. Luckily, Charlie noticed the hot-shit tourist hoodies for sale. We got some, and looked like homeless hobo twins with black feet.

Just then, Charlie spotted a cab and I flagged it down.

Mr. Cabbie had no fear of death. He never wore a seatbelt, and drove 50 miles per hour as quickly as he could get to it, for as long as the lights would let him. I surreptitiously buckled my own seatbelt…quietly, in case he had some moral issue with them, and might kick us out for using them.

When we got home, I wept. Well…that’s right now.

Thanks.

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Ingenuity…the playful mind in action

I shouldn’t be alive