They’re persistent.
Trying to get me to join.
Not the Witnesses. If it were them, I could just strike up a conversation about anal sex until they abandoned my porch.
The rowers.
At first, I thought if I gave them my first-born they would leave me alone.
But they need an old guy for their masters’ team.
“Monday we do circle training,” I was told. “Thirty seconds at one station, then thirty seconds rest, then thirty more at the next.”
“Mmm.”
“And so on.”
“Mmn hmm. Well, Mondays, I have cello, theoretically.”
“Wednesdays we have weight training here.”
We were at the club, eating fondue and drinking beer or mulled wine. The fire in the fireplace was roaring. The place was quite warm.
“Thursdays we have a less intensive training at the school. Saturday is more weights or something here, we haven’t worked that out exactly yet.”
“That’s at two.”
“Something like that.”
“This is for the four-man team. Sculls.”
“Yes. Although our ultimate goal is to get eight old guys for the single-oar thing whatever the hell that’s called in English.”
“I tried that once and thought I’d broken my arm.”
“We’d explain better how to do it exactly.”
“Hrm.”
“Get you another beer?”
“Sure.”
And so on.
They’re also planning a week-long trip rowing through Hungary someplace this summer. Every time they try that they seem to get rained out or sink a boat or something.
Today a kid fell through the ice on the creek next to the club, but only part-way.