Day 23: Half-Tortoise

True story. One Saturday morning six months ago, Margo and I take a Bikram class at the Harvard studio. It’s being taught by one of the studio’s co-owners, Brad.

We kill ourselves for the first two-thirds of class, then hit the floor for our two minute break, aka Savasana, aka the very appropriately named Dead Body Pose. Everyone’s head is pointing towards the small dais where Brad and all the instructors operate.

Someone has dropped in from Manchester, NH. She’s doing a 60 day challenge. 60 days! Great Caesar’s Ghost! Our friend Caroline later did a 60 day challenge, and I joked, “Hey, I’ve done a three day challenge.” Anything in double digits, much less encompassing a whole month, was unthinkable.

Brad starts chatting during Savasana. “So, you’re here from New Hampshire. Nice work, doing the 60 day challenge. I remember when I lived in Keene, New Hampshire. I had to drive two hours to take a Bikram class.”

Wait wait wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute. Keene? You’re kidding me, right?

I shift my head to look up at Brad. Keep in mind: I’m covered in sweat, red-faced, and wearing only running shorts. (I know, I know: not while I’m eating dinner. I’m just trying to paint the picture.) And while I’m a noted loud-mouth, I almost never say anything during class. It's a cardinal rule of the room, that you take a vow of silence the moment the teacher starts talking. In eighteen months, I might have spoken the equivalent of an average-sized paragraph. So it takes a lot to get me to speak up in the hot room.

I manage to haltingly spit out, “Brad… that’s… my hometown.” And Brad replies, “I knew there was a reason I liked you, Scott.”

It turns out he moved from Michigan to Keene in the 70s. His folks still live there, only a few miles from where my mom has lived for almost 40 years. I’m guessing he graduated sometime between when my brother Dale went to Keene High (class of 1980) and when I attended (class of 1987). He took copious grief when he landed in Keene for being what the locals called “a goddamn flatlandah.” In fact, we now greet each other in cod-New Hampshire accents, saying “Jesum Crow” and “Were you born in a bahn?” Seriously—of all the hot rooms in all the towns in the entire U.S., and I end up in the one being run by someone I probably walked by once in a blue moon in my little hometown 30 years ago? Unbelievable.