The old coot is a slow poke

Something just dawned on me the other day. I was at a stoplight with three lanes going in my direction. The car next to me, a sleek-looking Audi, had nosed ahead into the crosswalk, eager to be first when the light turned green. He was; I lost the race at the starting line. I’m a slow person. It took me almost eight decades to realize it. (Apparently, I’m a slow learner too.)

I’m slow at about everything. Motorboat? Speedboat? Not me. I’m a canoe, kayak, and rowboat guy. When I go out in the Susquehanna River in my kayak and paddle upriver a mile or two I’m in a trance. All I can see from that level are a few houses and a couple of commercial buildings, but mostly just trees and hills. I feel like I’m on a lake in the Adirondacks. 

Motorcycle? Not me. I poke along on a bicycle. Not a fast one, like you see the spandex people leaning forward on. I’m upright and slow. No spandex on me. I’m going ten miles per hour; they’re going 20. When I worked as a soda jerk in high school the boss called me the Turtle; I spent too long making a banana split into a work of art. 

Snowmobile? Four wheel trail bike? Not me. I’m on cross-country skis or snowshoes, moving along at snail speed compared to snowmobilers and downhill skiers. I’m slow and sedated, pushing through fresh snow on a trail in the woods. And in summer, slowly hiking up those ski mountains in hiking boots.

Fast cars? I’ve had a few, but much of my driving life was spent in VW Bugs and Buses; 36-horsepower doesn’t get you there very fast. I have a friend who hit over 150 on his motorcycle and was rewarded with a speeding ticket. 

Another friend has a rare, high-speed and expensive VW, which he pushes up to 140 mph every so often. Another, who drove the Mass Pike at 120 miles an hour when he was in college, often gliding into the grass median to get around cars he came up on too fast. I’ve only had one speeding ticket; it was when I was 16 and wanted to see if I could get my father’s Edsel up to 100 miles an hour on Upper Court Street in Binghamton, N.Y. I lost my license and was back in the slow lane, on foot power. 

I even eat slowly; I’m the last to finish at home and everywhere else. “Have a beer,” someone will say, and hand me a long neck. An hour later I’m still sipping it. Yep! That guy at the stoplight made me realize, I’m a slow person. He did it again, as we were side-by-side at the next light, three miles down the road. Sometimes a turtle catches up.  

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