PF Flyers...Make You Run Faster and Jump Higher...that was the TV add. Remember that?
What red blooded American boy wouldn't want to run faster and jump higher? In my family, and probably yours as well, you got new tennies in the spring and new school shoes in the fall. Both pairs at least a size to big so that you would grow into them. Right? Well, my folks didn't have much money so each spring they took my sisters and me down for our annual tennies. My brother would have still been an accident waiting to happen at that point in time, say 1965 or 66. We always got those navy blue deck shoes, you know, cheapest shoe in the store. Hell, you couldn't run faster or jump higher in those sorry sacks of shit...know what I mean? Knowing that the blue deck shoes were coming didn't stop me from begging for PF Flyers...I really NEEDED to run faster and jump higher! What kind of parents wouldn't want that for their only son???
This had to have been a Saturday afternoon because my dad got off work at noon on Saturdays and my mom had to work until 6pm. I guess we got up to most all of our mischief on Saturday afternoons. Throwing 5 foot paper airplanes off the roof of the house, sailing toy boxes in the pond, an endless series of nearly disastrous home improvement projects and best of all trips out to my grandma Hamlin's farm, actually her brother's place but we always said "Grandmas Farm".
At the farm we would chop wood, dig holes, climb on piles of old lumber laced with rusty nails, you name it, the farm had it all. Probably one of the coolest things that it had was a sess pool. This was a like a septic tank except it was open on top. The human waste collected here and after some settling of the heavier matter the liquid would drain off and evaporate. Pretty cool, yeah?
What did all this have to do with PF Flyers? I'm getting to that.
The reason that I'm sure that this would have happened on a Saturday afternoon is that had it been any other day my mom would have been there. Had my mom been there I would never have gotten a pair of black high top PF Flyers nor would I have ended up treading human waste in the sess pool!!!
My dad was and is, a nut. He was very good at entertaining three kids on the cheap. He would let us sit up on the back of the back seat of our old ratty convertible with the top down and wave the beauty queen wave as we drove through town...that was the good life! He would take out his teeth, cover his face with shaving cream and make funny faces and sing songs for us. All the time, my mom saying "William, you are such a fool!!!"
How I talked him into buying the PF Flyers I do not know. What I do know is just as soon as I laced those babies on I really could run faster and jump higher, not to mention corner quicker and probably stop shorter as well! Oh how I taunted my sisters! I wasn't worried about them getting mad at me...after all, what could they do about it? They wouldn't be able to catch me even if they wanted to. They had deck shoes for cripes sake! The thing that I didn't take into account is that girls are smarter than boys and that they tend to hunt like a wolf pack, running their prey into the ground by keeping up a constant steady pressure. More on that subject later.
I just kept on running my mouth, at the shoe store, in the car, when we stopped at the A&W (kids got free root beer, remember?)and all the way out to the farm. PF Flyers this, PF Flyers that...what a little shit I was. (wow, there is some irony for you)
The taunting continued as we started into whatever it was that had taken us out to the farm in the first place. I just HAD to get those girls to chase me, how else was I to convince them, once and for all, of the superiority of my new shoes? You will have to try to picture me, running up, touching, pinching, poking, only to dash away. Then, at some distance, thumbs in the ears, fingers and tongue wiggling...na-na-na-nana...you cant catch me! Perhaps a little bump and grind at this point, a little shake the ol' butt at em, nanny-nanny-boo-boo...stick your face in dog poo!
Oh, that got em going! The chase was on!
I ran, I jumped, never looking back...no need to look back...they would be nowhere in sight, of this I was sure. Well at some point I did look back, and what I saw made me all the more confidant. While one of them was still in hot pursuit, the other had already started to hang back...I was sure that this was a sign that she had realized the folly of her actions and given up. On I ran, running faster than ever, jumping higher than the sky! I turned again to see if the other one had given up and discovered something that at the time I didn't quite understand. You see, it was the other sister that was now in hot pursuit and the one who had been hot on my tail was now hanging back...weak, slow, stupid girls, I thought.
Little did I know that the were employing one of the oldest tactics known in warfare. Keep the enemy moving by applying constant pressure all the while conserving your strength until his strength wanes...shit!!! I was in serious trouble...hell, they could very well keep this up all day! And I was indeed starting to get winded.
I didn't even want to consider what might be in store for me if they ever got their hands on me! I wasn't too worried about Teri, she was a kind and gentle kid and a confirmed follower, it was Kim that scared the living crap out of me! She was smart, and cool, and cunning, all in all...a dangerous foe. I know that the tactic that they used was all Kim...she would have given clear and concise instructions and stood for no deviation from her plan. She could just as easily give you a super wedgie, leaving you writhing on the ground, to dig it out, as she could give a pat on the head. Could administer and Indian burn that would leave you scared for life, or a dead leg that may well cause permanent paralysis!
Oh...I was in serious trouble...that is unless...
Unless...I could think of some way to get away...out of reach...an escape so daring, so bold, so outrageous that it would go down in family lore along side of the classics... like the boat propeller scar on my dad's ass cheek.
I had to think fast...I was quickly running out of gas.
This may be a good time to point out that decisions made in desperation should be avoided...
The thought occurred to me that even though my powers of faster running seemed to be failing me, that surely my higher jumping was still in full effect, after all, I hadn't, to this point, use the jumping powers much at all.
So I quickly devised a plan...I would run, full out, head long, directly at the sess pool. Kim, in a moment of total self-satisfaction, would think that she had run me to ground, trapped me, on one side, a rock, on the other the fabled hard place!
Little did she know!!! My plan, THE plan, was to lead her to the edge of the promised land...only to escape her clutches at the last instant. Yes...I would in one glorious jump, clear the sess pool leaving her standing, mouth agape in the wonder of it all. I would stand, victorious, on the far side. Never again would she kick me "where it hurts"...never again to apply her patented horse bite.
I WOULD BE FREE!!
PF Flyers...Run Faster, Jump Higher...well we're right back where we started out from. Why is that?
They didn't claim to make you jump farther...higher, yes...farther, not so much!
Higher would have been great...had I been playing basketball. But I was planning to jump across a bottomless pit of human waste...farther would have come in handy!
With my breath burning fire in my lungs I stole one final look back. I am sure that it was the hunters instinct because when they sensed that I would soon be trapped they had both joined in the chase, both of them were hot on my tail, wild eyed with anticipation.For one brief second I had the thought, wouldn't it be grand if they were so intent on capturing me that they forgot where they were and found themselves unable to stop in time and as I sailed over the sess pool to freedom they both plunged head long into it!!!
So it was, with that vision in my head and a grin on my face, I made my epic leap...higher and higher I flew...I had crossed about half the width of that pool when I first doubted the wisdom of THE plan...shortly after thateyes squeezed shut against the horror of my folly...I landed four square in that ocean of shit!!!
Now, I would like to be able to report that the depth of that pool, always rumored to be bottomless, was but a few harmless inches...no, the rumors were true...bottomless!!! Well, I never did touch the bottom at any rate.I bobbed to the surface...spitting and blinking, shit in my mouth, shit in my eyes, shit, shit, shit!!!!!
The laughing didn't start immediately...the girls ran screaming for help...the sides if that pool were vertical and slick with the residue of decades of ...well, you get it. So in my new PF Flyers I screamed and clawed at the side for something to grip while the girls ran for help.
Once my dad had hauled me out of there by my hair and hosed me off with the garden hose...the laughing started...it still goes on to this day...
As I'm sure you know I took quite a bit of poetic license in the telling of this story. I did try to jump over the pool of shit in my new PF Flyers, I did end up dipped in shit. The girls were chasing me, though I cant remember why.Kim was not at all mean, just smart and cunning.
