Flagrant Liar

We’ve all come across people who aren’t always honest with themselves and their self-deceit can be amusing, sadly enough. Usually this dishonesty is geared towards the attainment of a state of mind that the actuator deems more pleasant than reality. The ‘I can still run and a mile and a half in 8 minutes’ or the ‘maybe she’s just been busy… all month’ notions are simply deceptions that are easier to swallow than the truth. While I am not innocent of this cerebral brand of dishonesty, the lie that I told myself not too long ago was not directed at my state of mind or anything like that. I lied directly to my body.

At a rugby tourney in Dayton, Ohio, after having played in three games and with two more on the horizon, I was freaking exhausted. The 90+ degree temps and the 800 pound prop-forwards had brought me to a crawl. I was seeking a few moments respite from the sun under the shade of a tree and one of my team mates wobbled on by and congenially said, ‘We’ve got another game in a few minutes, Wolfgang, here you go’ and chucked me a Red Bull. I glanced down at the beverage in my hand and then at my shaking legs. I had learned that when muscle groups have run out of energy, they begin to run on lactic acid, and sometimes shaking will occur with the over-exertion. I returned my gaze to the Red Bull. I knew what would happen if I imbibed the contents. My body, barely responsive the commands issued to it by the brain, was out of go-juice and it hurt. The Red Bull, as every good little wacko knows, is chalk-way full of a substance known to certain parties as caffeine. I cracked that sucker open and I threw the dang thing down like a champ. My pupils began tripping up and down like tree frogs on meth, and the resistance to motion began to fade from the rest of me. I knew it wasn’t because I suddenly had more energy and I knew that it wasn’t because I was no longer operating on lactic acid. I willingly drank a substance that I knew would convince my body that it had more energy than it really did. I got back onto the pitch and I ran around like a manic, my body now blissfully under the impression that it could now haul way hardcore.

We lost that game and the one after, much to my chagrin and heartbreak. I’m pretty sure that the following morning my quadricepses were aware that they’d been deceived. You know what they say, once dishonesty’s been introduced into a relationship, it’s very hard to reestablish trust. I don’t think I’ll even try. I’m going to have another Red Bull.
studentweb.anderson.edu/~rrwolfgang
-Ryan