RACING AROUND IN CIRCLES

A week or two ago, my niece dropped by and put one of our ponies on a lunge line for a workout. Having proved it helps the disposition of this particular creature to get a good workout from time to time, I’ve been working him myself every few days.

But a horse has two sides to its brain, and they don’t cross-talk. So in order to work the pony in both directions, you have to train it twice: once for the
clockwise circle, once for the counter-clockwise direction.

That raised a question in my mind: why are all our races run anti-clockwise?
Is it an agreed-upon standard or is there some physiological reason to do it
that way? Is it habit? Tradition? How did it get started?

It turns out there are more theories than proof of why we run our races that way, but it cuts across all racing disciplines: auto races, horse races, track and field events and on and on.

Back in 1780 or so, a fellow named William Whitley ran the first recognized horse races in America, up in Lincoln County, Kentucky. Whitley was very pro-Revolution, and in light of the British custom of running their races in a clockwise direction, he purposefully set his track up to run the other way. That became the American standard…except at the vaunted Belmont, where races were run clockwise until 1921.

The auto racing folks say that since the driver’s wheel is on the left side of the car in America, running counter-clockwise gives the driver a better view
of the track, that it offers more shielding from a potential collision with the wall, and that it’s conducive to the effects of centrifugal force.

But what of other venues? Dog racing, cycling, roller derby and the like?

One theory says that it’s natural, since we read from left to right – which, if you think about it, makes it really tough on the Chinese athletes, because their printed material reads right to left from top to bottom. This theory also claims that it just seems “right” for the finish of a race to approach from the left, and that it gives spectators a better view of the last moments of a race.

Another claim is that it has to do with the slight leftward tilt of the human heart, and that running clockwise aids circulation and puts less strain on the organ as it cranks along during an adrenaline-charged event. This doesn’t seem to take dog hearts, horse hearts or any other organs into account.

And then there’s them as claim it harkens back to an old pagan belief that running counter-clockwise – going “widdershins” – banishes evil spells.

Whichever hypothesis you accept, it’s worth noting that AUSCAR – the Australian version of NASCAR – is run clockwise, that some European horse tracks are set up for clockwise races, and that Formula One racing is always done in a clockwise direction.

There just doesn’t seem to be a single, solid reason for us to run our events
counter-clockwise…but we do it, and it’s become the standard for most race events world-wide.

So I still don’t know why the majority of races everywhere are run counter-clockwise. What I do know is that ten minutes with a trotting pony at the end of a thirty-foot lunge line make me dizzy as hell…and it doesn’t matter which direction he’s going.

TALKING AT GRANDPA

Conceeded: I have not had children in my life. I know very little about them beyond what I learned as a pre-teen, attending the needs of a younger brother and sister. Maybe that’s why I’ve never felt an imperative to have a brood of the little beastards clattering about the house.

Their primary job, it seems, is to spread crumbs around and to leave sticky globs of unspeakable chewed-and-discarded purple or lime green things on the arm of the chair where my evening drink customarily sits. There’s ample evidence in most child-burdened homes of their perpetually-grimy little paws and the litter of sharp, unseen remains of unbreakable plastic toys which are a menace to those who dare walk barefoot across the carpet.

I write this in a few moments of quiet after an hour-long visit this afternoon from my great-niece, a force of nature not yet five years old. It is not unlike the sudden calm after a great storm, a severe artillery shelling or the deafened ears of one who stood too close to an exploding propane tank.

Admitted coward that I am, I was able to sulk in my little lair, pretending to be occupied on the computer for most of the visit, while both Mother and Grandmother rode herd on a moppet with the energy of a hurricane. Still, there came a moment of distraction for the elders and my privacy was invaded. I found myself facing a hazel-eyed chatterbox whose thirty inches of height apparently contain all the lore, legends and knowledge of mankind, all of which she attempted to convey to me in a remarkably short time.

I feigned interest with the raising of an eyebrow or widening of the eyes and an occasional “Oh?” slipped in between her pauses for breath – which, with her pure and unsullied lungs, were brief and infrequent. I puffed my cigarette and blew second-hand smoke her direction. Undeterred, she rattled on. And on. And on.

In less than five minutes, I was apprised of the fact that no one wanted to see her underwear beneath the little cotton sundress she wore, that she sometimes gave herself a “wedgie” – with appropriate gestures – that I had to feel her face where a droplet of perspiration leaked down her temple, that she could turn a somersault – and did, twice, as proof – that no one was supposed to see her boobies either, although she said, “I only have little bitty ones.” I learned that her brother was visiting his birth father in Iowa, that the newest pony in our string tried to drag her through the dirt when she grabbed its halter, and she didn’t know what that dark smudge was on her white sandals but it was “Probably horse poop,” which led to her assertion that food makes people poop, but it was lemonade and soda that make you pee. A bottle of water, she says, does not. Water makes dogs pee., and she has a sore on her back where a bug bit her, but I shouldn’t rub it for her because she herself had “…itched it a lot.”

She told me a story of being hoist into a tree, “…a really big tree,” by her older brother when she was six (which, if factual, had to have occurred in a prior incarnation) and that her mother couldn’t find her until the boy confessed to having hidden the baby. I protested, “How could that have happened? You’re only four…you haven’t been six yet.” A split second passed. “No, I was…two.” “Two?” “No, one! Just one!” Game. Set. Match.

She prattled away and I was aloof, borne along by the certain knowledge that even the youngest of the feminine sex can manage seemingly cogent conversation without the active participation of a listener.

I found myself mesmerized by the purity of her skin with its faint underblush of rose, the health of pink lips and gums and perfectly-formed miniature teeth, the intrinsic knowledge of the female of the effect of widening those amazing hazel eyes, the fine arch of brows and the slightly sweaty perfection of her sandy brown curls and beautifully-formed ears, the fineness of her arms and legs and her expressive little finger gestures.

Ten years from now or twelve, she will begin to make informed decisions about her existence. I can only hope to be around to see her then, and to hear her chatter on about her comings and goings, her friends and that “icky new boy” at school on whom she will have – and won’t admit – a huge crush.

For better or worse, she’s going to be a knockout, physically. And she’s already showing precocious intelligence that promises to become a handful for her parents.

I hope she will always be that little typhoon of gab, the font of information, however flawed, the open-minded and free-speaking individual she promises to become.

I can only pray that no one – no one – has the temerity to crush her lively interest in the world as it reveals itself to her, to dull or to blunt her curiosity, or to decry even the mistakes she will inevitably commit or to shame her into becoming a mere cipher in an already-too-bland world.

And yes, I am ashamed of myself for blowing my cigarette smoke at her. It was more childish than her chattering, and a greater sin than she can yet imagine. The urge took me by surprise, and I have no excuse.

I understand on reflection that it sprung from an envy of what it is to be a child and to be perfect in every way.

GROWING OLDER

c.2009VirgilT

Last night I learned of the passing of Walter Cronkite. If you don’t know who Walter Cronkite is – was – stop reading this immediately and send me an email. I’m taking you off my list of Dose recipients.

The title to Hemingway’s novel, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” derives, I think, from a John Donne quote, “…ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” I have tonight truly heard that bell’s sad clangor.

I can’t think of another individual whose presence on this earth helped place me more fully in my time and place than Cronkite. He was an anchor in more ways than one, and held fast the mooring lines for three generations.

It was he who grieved with me over the assassination of President Kennedy and our nation’s transition from adolescence into full and knowing maturity with its concomitant recognition of evils in the world.

It was Uncle Walter who walked me through mankind’s spectacular arrival, first steps on and successful return from the Moon.

It was he to whom I and millions of others turned each evening to learn the true state of our nation and that of the other nations of the world. If Cronkite said it was so, it was so.

Under his firm hand, the CBS Evening News coalesced and matured into top-notch must-see television programming. The same could be said of his series, “You Are There,” which always fascinated me with its reenactments of historic events and Cronkite’s narrative making it clear just how and why things transpired as they did.

His tenure bespoke an era; that of the post-WWII generation with the dawn of the technological age: space programs, computers, cell phones, Concord, better automobiles, high-speed monorails, expansive Interstate highways and much more, an era carefully examined and detailed by Mr. Cronkite's skilled journalism.

There has not been, and is not likely to be, another who had – and deserved – the complete trust of a nation as did this singular individual.

I am unmoved by the death of bizarre pop star Michael Jackson, and I will be glad when the tabloid media move on to other matters, just as I was when that busty blonde chippie who married the elderly millionaire died. I can’t even remember her name. Oh…Anna Nicole Smith.

They are the chaff of life’s threshing, and deserve to be borne away on the passing winds of time.

Saying goodbye to Walter Cronkite is a different matter altogether.

His passing tells me that the bell is slowly, inexorably banging out its single dolorous note for me, and that my time, too, is finite, and his demise does so as no other event could have done.