First and foremost, I would just like to thank Fat Dub for putting up his first post. Just thought you should know, he literally had it in the drafts for two weeks. I'm not sure whether it was habitual laziness on both of our parts, or if it actually took him that long to remove all the expletives (I'm bargaining on the latter), but either way, it is published.
As if Fat Dub's post at the beginning of the week wasn't good enough, it is also Penn Relays week. While this probably means absolutely nothing to the 5 people reading right now, to me, Penn Relays week means an invigorating day of watching amateur athletes compete at the most awe-inspiring stadium in all of America. In other words, I get to miss school for a day.
Let me rephrase that. I get to miss school if I get a ticket. Strath Haven being the track powerhouse that it is naturally has several relay teams running in the Penn Relays, and with that comes the perk of many tickets to the head coach. You're probably saying to yourself, "Oh, so Coach Ed got the tickets. Since he and Soup are like two peas in a pod, he will definitely give him a ticket to Friday's relays." That would be a decent assumption, if Coach Ed was the head coach of our track team. That's where you are all wrong. While Coach Ed may be a Baller Fo' Real, Strath Haven is coached by one of the all-around bossiest men in the history of Planet Earth. The man I am talking about, of course, is Bob Jesson.
Have you ever met someone who you are so afraid of that at times you tremble in their presence? Ever soiled your pants just from hearing someone yell? Me neither, but you can just ask Teddy about how that feels. Anyway, if ever there were a person to be intimidated by, it is Mr. Jesson.
He teaches 7th grade history, and he has never missed a full day of class. Ever. I had his class a few years back and I still remember the day he came back in after receiving tooth surgery earlier that morning. Nothing he said was decipherable, but it matters not. Besides that, Mr. Jesson related everything we learned to football. In hindsight, his analogy proved accurate. He also told our classes about how when he used to teach at school in his earlier years, he used to stop knife attacks and break up in-classroom fights. His kids never messed with him there, he said, so he could handle anything we threw at him. Plus the fact that he had the best current events game known to man made him an excellent history teacher.
Mr. Jesson coaches the middle school football team (Fat Dub was one of his favorite pupils) and the high school boy's track team. I'm not sure how long he has been coaching for exactly, but it is probably in the neighborhood of 40 years. No joke. He's legit. If you don't believe me, chew on this food for thought: Mr. Jesson coached Leroy Burrell. If that name sounds familiar, that probably has something to do with the fact that Leroy Burrell was twice the fastest man in the world.
Anyway, Jesson knows his way around a track. It is highly advised to be aware during interval days, and not to get in the way of his sprinters. One distance runner, Jessy Chen, knows the wrath of Jesson first hand. While Jessy was doing a workout (pretty slowly) in lane 1, the sprinters started, also in lane 1. Mr. Jesson began to yell to get Jessy out of the first lane to make room for the sprinters for a few seconds. Even though it was a windy day and he was on the opposite side of the track, Jessy could actually hear him. That can be attributed to Mr. Jesson's yell, which can be heard halfway across the globe on a quiet night. The only problem was, Jessy was so befuddled by the loud yelling in his direction that he stood his ground and looked around in confusion as the sprinters passed on the outside. After yelling to Jessy for five seconds and realizing it had failed, Jesson let out a quote for the ages: "THAT KID IS A FRIGGIN IDIOT." Needless to say, he chewed Jessy up for not moving. Chen would never make that mistake again.
This is not to say Mr. Jesson is just a loud guy who makes everyone piss their pants (this is the part where Greg tells us that it was 8 years ago). He's a nice guy who genuinely wants every guy on his team to do well. Unfortunately, he works with the sprinters, and lets Coach Ed handle the distance guys. For that reason, and for others (like not having hour long discussions about how much of a douchebag Bobby Flay is) I don't share the same bond with Mr. Jesson as I do with Coach Ed. So when Mr. Jesson had extra tickets available for Friday, it would be a little tougher to get them than it would be if Edwin had them.
On Wednesday, Jesson had an impromptu gathering by the track about Penn Relays. I'm pretty sure I wasn't even supposed to be there at that point, considering I'm "a slow, white teenager" as Chris Murphy appropriately put it (for the record, I just ran a 56.4 and hawked some kid from Radnor in our 4x400 B relay... they don't call me Sprinting Soup for nothing). At the end, Mr. Jesson said that he had a few extra tickets available if anyone was interested. I was in the back of the huddle, and I may or may not have been wearing a bandana (Hint: I was totally wearing a bandana). Just so everyone knows, it complimented my playoff-beard-that-actually-looks-like-stubble-because-the-hair-is-blonde-and-few-and-far-between pretty well, which is the main reason I had it on. I'm sure it added to my whole aura when I yelled out that I was interested in a ticket. That may have contributed to Mr. Jesson proceeding to mumble for about 10 seconds to himself before saying "We'll see, a lot of people probably want them."
I wasn't really expecting Mr. Jesson to say something different, so I wasn't too crushed. He then sent us away, and promptly called over several members of the team to ask if they wanted the extra tickets. When I found out about this development, I did nothing out of the ordinary because, again, I expected it.
Fast forward to the next day, when Mr. Jesson was situated on the bench watching us finish up our intervals. It turns out he had plenty of tickets, one of which I received. I was in. My parents let me skip school, so off to the Penn Relays I would go.
The next day I arrived at the train station with Noah Frick, ready for a day of fun. We had already planned to eat at Pot Belly, a delicious sandwich joint around the corner from Frankin Field. How did we know about this place, you ask?
About a year and a half ago, a few of us strapping young fellows took the train to University City to see Penn play. We ran rampant around the Palestra, looking for band kids to pick on and some of the coolest foam hats you'll ever see. Apparently the hats were only for students, or for band kids (I couldn't tell because the only student section there was for the band), so no one gave them to us. If there were six of us there, we eventually managed to get five. The bossiest retrieval of a hat was Jack Eiel's, who pretty much ran onto the court to get one. Not even kidding, you can ask him if you'd like. Anyway, I was the only one who didn't get a hat, and got completely shut down outside of the Palestra by some Penn doucher who had two hats but was "saving it for my friend." Disappointment showered me at first, until we visited Pot Belly and had some high quality eats.
This is why I was so pumped to go back to Pot Belly, to relive some of the great moments of the past. We got on the train, and there may have been half of the team on there. That's an exaggeration, but Jesson got a lot of tickets for us. We got to the Relays and saw races. And then we saw more races. And then we saw a lot more races. Finally, our 4x100 relay team was up. They finished first in their heat, but they were no match for the Jamaican teams who got faster times. A group of us left the Relays to go enjoy some eats. This crew consisted of Noah Frick, Richard "Scoot" Scott, Dave Klein, Fen Bloyd, Papa John Shiiba, Andrew Marmorstein, Jeff Seelaus, Sam Pinecone, his girl, and the Sobel Soup of course. Looking back, we totally could have waited an extra two minutes for the guys who just ran (like Down-C) to come up, but we were thinking with our stomachs. When we walked outside of the relays, we met up with a former teammate who now runs at Penn, George Dickson. George is a somewhat frequent visitor to the blog (meaning he goes on once or twice a year and clicks on some ads to make me money) and an all-around good guy. All of us hit up Pot Belly and got some well-made sandwiches. It was a bit of a role reversal for Sam's girl, seeing as she wasn't the one making the sandwich this time, but she made it through alright. Besides that, Noah, Scoot and I all bought whole pickles. I shouldn't have to confirm this, but they were finger-licking good.
We realized how big of jerks we were (we know) when Jordan rolled up by himself fresh after racing. He gave directions to Chris Williams and Down-C on how to get there. Unfortunately, Jordan's version of giving directions includes telling them the wrong street and describing the eatery as "next to a brick building." If you've ever been to Penn before, you know how great of a description that is, considering the area is legitimately 90% brick. Once Chris and Bryan showed up, the majority of the group headed back.
Inside, there was a section to get a lot of free stuff. The things you could get really weren't all that great, but everybody and they moms knows that free makes everything good. Apparently Coach Ed agrees with that statement, seeing as he was far more excited about getting the free stuff than we were, and he has been going to the Penn Relays for years. After eating a few gross Snickers Marathon bars (never try those), we headed up to the stands. Only this time, we went to the upper deck and tried working on our farmer's tans. This provided for an enjoyable experience for a couple of reasons.
One was the Jamaicans. The stands were loaded with them, and they made their presence felt. The whole day I had the Jamaican Bobsled Team theme song stuck in my head. Except instead of bobsledding, the Jamaicans were running and cheering, which are both things they do very well at. Whenever someone was "hawking" another person, meaning they were making up ground fast at the end of a race, all of the Jamaicans would yell "WHOOP" repeatedly in extremely high-pitched voices. It made a close race even that more entertaining.
The second best part about being in the upper deck was when Dave Klein fell asleep. I guess he didn't get much sleep the night before, because Dave was out. He was lying down in between the bleachers, where people rest their feet. It was too good of a situation to not mess with him, and of course I was the one that had to do it. I found two stray french fries and stuck them in his already closed fist. Several pictures were taken, and George laughed heartily. Somehow the fries got dislodged before Dave woke up, so he never quite believed us when we told him that he was eating them as he fell asleep. Nonetheless, it was a good time. Shortly thereafter we headed home, all tired from this day of infamy.
There's no video this post. It's half because I'm far too lazy, and half because for some reason, the videos are being cut off.
Always Serving,
Sobel Soup
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