Sunday Story- Crestfallen

Crestfallen- feeling sad and dispirited

Ex: His father came rushing over to console him after he narrowly finished in second place in the 100 meter finals in Beijing, an event he had been training for his entire life. “Son, no need to be crestfallen, a silver medal is still an incredible accomplishment! I mean Kevin, come on, the guy you lost to shattered the world record! Let’s face it, you’re good but you’re not world record good. I really don’t think we could have done anything differently in your preparation that would have helped you run a world record time. No, seriously, we couldn’t have even done so much as one more wind sprint. I had a meticulously crafted game plan to bring you righttt to the brink of death during every training session, and we executed that plan time and time again. Your mother still gives me shit for that time out in Sedona with the pack of wild dogs and the defibrillator, but she could never really see the big picture, could she? Just like she struggled to see the value in you wearing those electric Dr. Scholl’s inserts that shocked your feet in order to keep them constantly moving back in elementary school. Oh man, you would come home from school in tears complaining that your feet felt like you’d stepped in hot magma, you were such a little sissy. But over time you started to see the end goal, the premier athletic competition in the world, the event with the logo that looks like that not-quite-right Audi emblem when you purchase one from a seedy Albanian-owned dealership in Far Rockaway: the goddamn Olympics. And then, slowly but surely, the complaints went away, and your feet started hurting less and less.”

“Dad, that was because of the numbness as a result of all the nerve damage in my fe…”

“Kevin, stop with the nonsense. It was because you were working towards your goal. And nothing, nothing was going to stand in your way. Do you remember your first crib, the one shaped like the Nike track shoe? And your status as the youngest member in the history of the movers n’ shakers running club? You were born to be a runner. Nay, destined”

“Dad, those were all decisions made for me before I had any real autonom…”

“Kevin! We come from a running clan. Your great, great, great, great grandfather Wilhelm was the first man to wear a 5-inch inseam short with the little built in underwear. In Russia too, may I add! He opted for functionality over warmth, and that’s why he was a champ.”

“Dad, didn’t Wilhelm need a double amputation surgery immediately following that competit...”

“Kevin! That’s beside the point. Well, alright, if you don’t think running is in your blood, how do you come to explain me- your life-giver, the source of half of your genetic material, your father- not just qualifying for the 88’ Summer Olympics in Seoul, but actually blowing away the entire field to nab the gold medal in the 100 meter dash.”

“Dad, your medal was rescinded for blood doping and what the Olympic committee determined to be ‘rampant steroid use’. So yes, you may have won, but there’s a huge asterisk next to your nam…”

“Kevin! I won that medal! I won it fair and square! But they took it from me! They took it from me, son!”

*He rips off Kevin’s silver medal and puts it around his own neck. He sprints out of the stadium and somewhere far off into the urban sprawl of Beijing. He spends the rest of his days in a cave somewhere outside the city limits. He survives off of raw fish, yet he grows slimmer and slimmer with every passing day. His mind escapes him. He thinks of nothing other than the silver medal draped around his vascular toothpick of a neck. He caresses the medal and speaks to it, and the medal speak back to him. With what little self-awareness remains, he thinks to himself, ‘my precious’, but he does not say it, for fear of being corny. *

Introductory sequence from Lord of the Jing: The Fellowship of the Five Interlocking Rings