Pop Goes Ploop

What would you do if you threw the chocolate blob at the end of your Tootsie Pop, stick attached, into a trash barrel, which was not a barrel filled with trash, but rather a barrel into which race volunteers dipped cups that would wind up in the hands of runners in the ninth mile of the Eugene, Oregon, Marathon and Half-Marathon. What would you do, if instead of hearing the "ssshhh-plink" of a Tootsie stick/blob sliding down a plastic liner and hitting a beer can, you hear "ploop," as your garbage breaks the surface of the water, and floats to the bottom of the now less-than-completely-fresh, life-giving substance your fellow racers will gratefully guzzle?

Would you instantly thrust your hand into the Hazmat Barrel, thinking that the Five Second Rule applies to acqueous violations as well, forgetting that you just wiped your nose with that same hand, the hand that was only fifteen minutes ago in a place where the sun don't shine, inside a thin coccoon of toilet paper, inside a Honey Pot (as they call them here), where you had to stop, because the crepes at Shari's had too many strawberries, and that impromptu crapador just happened to be out of hand sanitizer-SHIT! Shit, no! Don't put your hand-shaped germ-universe into all that water!

You should just turn quickly, and get away from the scene. Do not look back at the Aid Station Captain, who, hearing the "ploop," is watching the stick/blob settle to the bottom of a forty-gallon barrel of Cascade Mountain Spring Water helicoptered in by the Oregon Air National Guard at 3a.m. from the West Face of Mt. Hood, because, if you do, you will not be able to turn away in time to avoid locking eyes with him when he acts on that feeling we all have when someone is staring at us, and then he would know it was you who had ruined his Aid Station. You may mutter, "Sorry, Dude" under your breath, but take care, Pavarotti, that the sotto is very, very voce, for otherwise you would essentially be confessing to mass-poisoning of a public water source, which, in Oregon, is punishable by a minimum of fifty years in a sea-lion colony.

Just run away, Renee. Hustle your malfeasing little butt deep into the starting corral, and let your fear and shame transform themselves into an adrenaline rush that will propel you to one hell of a half-marathon time. And when all the Eugene TV stations put you on camera afterwards and ask how you did it, you can tell them it was all thanks to the thirteen cups of chocolate-flavored water you had at Aid Station Number Nine.

Thanks for reading.