ThomCalandra.com: An Essay, "Bike Path"

"Bike Path"

By Thom Calandra

It was on the bike path I heard the best line I've heard all year.

This was just the other day. I jog past this kid from the high school trotting up the path. He's a tall kid. Probably the school’s star lacrosse player. This is Mill Valley, California, not far from where I live. The boy, fast becoming a man, he’s calling out a girl’s name. "Robin, hey Robin." She’s on her cell phone. He reaches her right by that little bridge over the creek that never has any water in it. They light up a cigarette together, one of those herbal jobs that smell like Indonesia. I can see him taking a puff, handing it back to Robin. He’s talking, looks serious. Pleading, in a way, with his hands sweeping in front of the girl, then running through his hair, then taking the cigarette back from the girl. He towers above this girl, by the way, and that’s what got me thinking. What is he saying? I mean, it’s not even 10 in the morning. Maybe they're skipping their second class of the morning?

I take one of the benches along the path to do some leg stretches. "Robin," he says between puffs and then, out of our prime athlete it comes ... in one big rush, "Robin, my dad says I’m going to be 6-4, maybe more, by the time I’m 20. And what are you right now, 5-2? Well, you know Dad, Mr. M.D. He figures you’re good for 5-4 at best. See, my mom is 5-8 and Dad he's 6-foot-3. They make a nice pair, don’t you think? Sure they fight. All parents do. But at least they go at it face to face. I mean, without one of them all bent over and the other craning her neck up. Oh shoot, Rob, just shoot, this is NOT going to work. I mean us! Picture us in 10 years, at a dance. I’m stooped over just trying to keep in step with you and you have the neck of a, of a I don't know, a giraffe. Like Renee Zellweger. She has one freaking long neck is all I know. Or is it Catherine Zeta Jones? Oh please, don’t start crying. I’m just being as sens-uh … ow! You burned me with that thing. Ow!"

Anyway, the girl is crying her eyes out. She just threw the cigarette butt at Mr. 6-4, and he‘s rubbing his arm where it landed, probably wondering how to get back to class without witnessing a meltdown on the bike path. As I get up to jog home, I hear Robin say, "Sh - -! Sh -- again! I’ve said sh - - so many times this morning it doesn’t even mean anything to me any more!"

That, right there on the bike path, was the best line I've heard all year.

About the Author

Photo of Thom Calandra

Thom Calandra’s novel “Pablo By Numbers” was excerpted in autumn 2007 on the StockHouse.com group of web sites in Canada and the USA. Thom was a co-founder and a columnist and broadcaster at CBS MarketWatch.