Union Station

I took a group of broadcast journalism students on a light rail ride to Union Station. The mission was to hear ten things and see ten things and quickly turn them into a live shot. Well one of the things that most of them didn't see, was a watch. They missed the return flight on rail. They may have been distracted by something I wish I hadn't seen. Consider the simple observation, " I saw a man jogging by." Now watch the complexity develop.

"I saw a man, likely my age or older, jogging by. I say jogging because my accepted definition of that word simply means having one foot off the ground in front of the other, whilst swinging one's arms back and forth rhythmically. That's all the break I'm going to give this guy."

"I say he was likely my age, and let me add, at least my girth, probably greater.  He also seemed to have adopted my preferred jogging pace, one which if  he or I were the tortoise, the hare need never fear."

"The earth rumbled slightly as he trudged past our observation posts. Each breath he took looked like it may be his last. It hurt to watch the painfull grimace that had been his face. The skin was checkered with various shades of redness.  His cheeks looked pulled back as if he were doing 6 'G's in one of those NASA labs. Yet this man was going nowhere fast."

"Our subject could be forgiven all these visual reflections had he made at least one positive sartorial choice. You expect to see oddity around a Union Station. But this man's jogging wear was frightening. Lets start near the top. Picture this now. The man was wearing a tank top. To aid your perspective think Marlon Brando playing Stanley in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Now fast forward to Marlon Brando just before he died wearing that same tank top. Get the picture? I don't really want to elaborate. "

"Now let's jump down to the bottom. Here we have the old tennies with no socks look? Someone should have told him that choice was for finely tuned track athletes whose limbs had been sculpted by Michelangelo. Tennies with no socks do not belong at the bottom of two giant sequoias."

"Lest you'd thought I'd forgotten the middle, rest easy. You may well wish I had forgotten. This more than middle aged man of more than middle aged tonage was wearing track shorts. These were not the current clinging support hose we see on the track today. These were the old track shorts. Remember? Slit all the way up the side to give your lower appendages the freedom to go fast. Fast would have been a blessing in this case."

" I won't tell you what the shorts revealed. I will only say I'm concerned about the students who were stranded in LoDo. I'll be seeing them later today. I'm prepared to suggest to any number of them that they might want to think about professional help. I know I'm thinking about it. Should I ever even think about stepping into similar attire, lock me up, quick."