An Informal Decree/Plea to Depraved Suburbia

Dearest Friends of Johnson County, USA:

Let me start with this: I dig you. I realize our beloved adolescents need to experiment a little with their new-found freedom. Like a caged animal, the first steps of liberty are always the most aggressive and never the most rational.

I've been there and done that myself. Be it with road trips, the opposite sex, or with that shirtless idiot running on the sidewalk nearby at 11 o'clock at night. Things I'll regret, but things that helped purge the wild out of me. This was good for me and those around in the long run.

So I get it. I understand the whole driving by and calling me names thing while I'm mounting a long hill, short on coordination, but not on effort, with sweat pouring down forehead and onto my wheezing, disfigured face. I would have probably done the same thing to myself a few years back to be quite honest.

It wouldn't be fair for me to put you under a different microscope than the one I had honed in on me back in my heyday.

And to be quite frank about the matter, I actually enjoy the banter and teasing on occasion, so long as the name calling is creative and not too terribly offensive. I'll admit, the very best JOCO hoodlums have made me laugh mid-run a time or two, while screaming profanities and flashing genitalia out what I presume is daddy's SUV. I could be wrong, though. You could have very well footed the bill. Jobless, responsibility free and all.

Even still, your indecent exposure is illegal in this country and most others, and at least frowned upon in a good deal of the rest. I'd suggest saving the "mooning" for special occasions, holidays, etc., if you could.

But I'll also admit: "Run, Faggot" is starting to get just a little old.

Granted, it sure was funny the first fifty times I heard it; I'll give you that. But how about something new for a change? There are plenty of other mindless insults you could blast out your window.

I'm long-winded as usual, but long story short: if all you little privileged, white-collared miscreants want to get together and have a pow wow to come up with a few fresh, new things to call me and my fellow runners, that'd be awful sweet. I know you can do it. And I think we'd all benefit from that gesture.

Please and thanks. On behalf of all JOCO runners young and old, yours truly,

Dan