Lisa Baumert

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Nebraska

The first time I ran a mile

March 18, 2016 by Lisa 2 Comments

Middle school mile

The first time I ran a mile, I was 12 years old.

Well, that’s not completely accurate. I ran the “10-minute straw run” in gym glass. But if you were to ask my elementary school self, that didn’t really count. It wasn’t a truly accurate measure of my mile speed. And I cared about that.

You remember how the straw run worked, right? Orange cones marked out a circle in the field behind the playground. There were 10 minutes on the clock and you were given one straw for each lap of the circle you completed. It was the culmination of our physical education curriculum – the most dreaded and arduous undertaking of our 10-year-old lives.

And of course – as I did with all PE and related physical activities – I took the straw run way too seriously. I recall being convinced that people were cheating. I remember scoffing at my classmates who were walking. I also remember approaching my PE teacher after the bell had rung and class was over. I wanted to make sure – to hear it from her – that I had collected the most straws of any girl in my class.

[Remind me to tell you about the time I was the Third Grade Flexed Arm Hang Champion. It was glorious. I couldn’t write for two days afterward because my arm muscles seized up and gave out. I was so proud.]

Yeah, so basically I was that girl in Phy. Ed. that you hated. The one who you secretly hoped would “accidentally” get kicked in the face on scooter day.

The first time I ran a mile as a distance runner was in the summer of 1999. May of 1999 to be precise. I was fresh off a triple crown win at the All-City Track and Field Day. My 1st place blue ribbons for performances in the 400m, long jump and 100m shuttle relay were proudly pinned to the bulletin board in my room – likely next to my latest puff paint creation and the optical illusion JESUS heroglyph my grandmother had knitted on a plastic canvas. The later looked something like this. Grandma Krause made one for each of her grandchildren, and it had taken me several years and a lot of staring to finally see Jesus’ name.

I was 12 years old. I was growing out my bangs – but not all of them. Baby bangs were a big thing in Fremont, Nebraska at the time and despite my greasy, pimple-ridden forehead and inability to properly form them into the single swooping curl that the style demanded, growing out some but not all of my bangs felt like the first real autonomous style decision I had or could make. Those baby bangs made me feel cool and independent. They marked the beginning of my transition into adulthood and self-actualization – a process I’m still working through.

I was 12 years old and I looked like this:

6th grade Lisa

The day I ran a mile for the first time, my mother drove me to the high school. My hometown has only one public high school – Fremont High School – and it sits on Lincoln Avenue between 16th and 19th streets. In Fremont, the numbered streets pretty much end at 23. Beyond that it’s country roads laid out on a grid, corn fields and an intersection every mile.

It was 6:50 a.m. when we pulled into the north parking lot. I was sleepy and nervous. The high school cross country coach had invited me to train with the team several mornings a week during the summer. She had seen my victorious 400m effort at the All-City Track and Field Day and suggested that I give cross country a try. I peered out the passenger side window of my mother’s Chevy Astro van, watching as girls began to arrive. I looked for familiar faces and my stomach tightened. I wanted to be liked and welcomed; I wanted to do well. Like PE class, I cared – maybe too much.

All of the girls at practice that day – except for my friend Maggie – were older than me. I knew Maggie from church. We had gone to different elementary schools, but in the fall we’d both be starting 7th grade at Fremont Middle School. Maggie’s older brother ran cross country and she seemed to know what to expect; she seemed more confident than I.

Coach Hento was organized and direct, kind and clear.  After introductions and a stretching routine we divided into groups based on our abilities and the distance we would be running. Maggie and I were the last people assigned to a training group.

“You two will run with me,” Coach told Maggie and I. “We’re just going to go one mile today.”

One mile. OK. I can do that, I thought.

I wore basketball shorts, a cotton t-shirt and athletic shoes. They weren’t running shoes – just basic trainers. And they were a size and a half too big because maybe I was still growing, my mother said. It turns out, I wasn’t. My feet never got bigger and I never grew any taller after the beginning of that summer. That summer was the onset of what I would be for the rest of my life – the start of me growing into myself.

Maggie, Coach Hento and I waited for the other groups of runners to leave before we headed out on our one-mile run. Coach told us that we would go slow and that the key to training for and running long distances is pacing. I let Maggie and Coach take the lead as we left the parking lot. We headed west on 19th Street toward Bell. I was quiet.

“Keep your breathing calm,” Coach instructed. “You should be able to talk while you run at training pace.”

A mile felt like a long way. The idea of a mile felt even longer. In Fremont you can get from one end of town to the other in under three miles. Up to this point, all of my conscious life had been spent in this place – this flat and quiet place. Perspective has taught me that Fremont is small and flat and quiet. But back then, to me it was real and the measure of all that was important and normative.

I don’t remember all the details of that morning, but if it was like most summer mornings in Fremont, it was cool and damp. If the wind was blowing in the right direction, the smell of freshly slaughtered pigs was drifting north from the Hormel plant south of the tracks. There probably wasn’t much traffic and there’s a good chance I saw a few people I knew during that one-mile run. It would have all been familiar, even if the running a mile part was not.

As we headed back toward the high school on 16th street, just as we were passing by the CMA Church, Coach turned back to me.

“Don’t let your feet hit the ground so loudly. Your foot strike should be soft,” she instructed. “And drop your arms. Don’t carry them so high.”

I felt embarrassed and a bit discouraged at her instructions. For the remainder of the run I focused all my energy on quiet feet and low arms. I had so much to learn.

Unlike all of my running endeavors up to that point, this training run did not end in a sprint to the finish. There were no winners and losers that day – just an easy, abrupt stop and encouragement and affirmation all around. I liked that.

Coach Hento and I were the last people at practice that day. We sat on a concrete bench outside of the East Gym of the high school and waited for my mom. Coach asked me what I thought of my first day of cross country practice. Did I enjoy it?

“Yeah, I did,” I replied. “But I don’t know if long-distance running is for me. I don’t know if I can do this, or if I’ll be any good at it.”

I was being honest. I didn’t see myself as a long distance runner. There was a real sense of accomplishment in having run one mile, but thought of doing many more in succession was daunting.

“I think you’ll be OK,” Coach told me. “Just stick with it.”

And I did – obviously. Quitting was a sin in my house, after all. I came back the next morning and the one after that, and again the next week. My arms started swinging lower without me thinking about them. I got real running shoes and my feet stopped striking the pavement so forcefully.  I heeded Coach Hento’s advice and by the end of the summer my longest run was a 5-miler. Five miles is basically a marathon when it means that you reach every edge and cross all the major streets of your hometown.

By the end of the summer I was addicted to that unique sense of accomplishment running imparts – that very personal, quiet strength and self-gratification that bubbles up when you’ve done something powerful and beautiful and hard.

17 years later, I’ve learned that that sense of accomplishment never goes away if you’re kind enough to yourself to acknowledge it.

That summer was the beginning and end of a lot of things for me. My feet stopped getting bigger and I started growing out some but not all of my bangs. The following summer I would grow out the rest of them and start buying smaller shoes.

That summer I started gaining perspective on myself and my home. I started growing into and out of my life. I started figuring out the parts of me that are essential, and the things I’m better for leaving behind.

That summer I found my passion and my tribe.

The first time I ran a mile didn’t change my life. But now, with a little more time, mileage and perspective – I can say that it probably did.

Posted in: Running, What I'm thinking Tagged: Fremont, Nebraska, Running, What I'm Thinking

Snow: Do you “scoop” it or do you “shovel” it?

February 4, 2016 by Lisa 3 Comments

Winter Storm Kayla swept across the Midwest earlier this week and hit Nebraska hard. I know this because my Facebook feed was teeming with snow-filled pictures and remarks, posted by my friends and relatives in the Cornhusker State. There were bundled-up children inside freshly-built snow forts, backyard decks submerged under a white, frosty blanket several feet deep and comments about how long it took to scoop the driveway. Everyone was talking about how much snow there was to scoop.

Snowy Loring Park

In Nebraska we scoop snow. We do not shovel snow. We scoop it.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered the verb scoop isn’t used universally to describe the action of removing snow from a driveway or sidewalk. Shovel is of course, the term of choice for nearly every other American. Shoveling snow isn’t a foreign phrase to me and my fellow Nebraskans. I don’t think twice when I hear someone employ it. My default term is simply scooping snow. That’s how it comes out of my mouth when I talk about clearing away the white, fluffy stuff.

My husband – perhaps like some of you – didn’t initially believe that scooping was a real thing.

“You made that up,” he asserted.

“It must have been something only your family said,” he argued

To shed light upon this variance of terminology and prove the validity of my claims, I’ve undertaken some light research.

A Twitter search for “scooping snow” yields – from what I can tell – tweets almost exclusively from Nebraskans. Nebraska’s major news outlets use the term scoop. It’s a real thing.

There are a few obscure places on the internet – like here and here – where the scooping/shoveling issue has been raised, but by and large this linguistic discrepancy has eluded thorough investigation.

The scoop/shovel inconsistency is not of the pop/soda variety. It isn’t oft-debated and widespread. The scoop/shovel divide is more along the lines of the water fountain/bubbler controversy. It’s quirky, confusing and limited to a small group of people.

By definition, to scoop is the action of picking something up with a scoop – which is “a deep shovel or similar implement for digging, dipping, or shoveling.” On the same token, a shovel is “a hand implement consisting of a broad scoop or a more or less hollowed out blade with a handle used to lift and throw material.” By these classifications, shoveling *probably* more accurately describes what most people do when they move and remove snow. But scooping isn’t completely categorically misguided.

Apart from the verbiage, I’ve discovered there is also much discrepancy around the naming and form of snow removal tools. A quick search of online retailers revealed the following.

This is a shovel:

Snow Shovel

 

 

This is also a shovel:

This is also a snow shovel

 

This is a scoop:

Snow Scoop

 

And this is a snow pusher:

Snow Pusher

 

My current theory is that the term scoop derives form Nebraska’s agriculture heritage. Call me silly, but compared to shoveling, scooping feels like a heartier action and something that’s larger in scale. I imagine a tractor scooping up things. You scoop cow manure. You scoop gravel. You scoop feed corn. And in Nebraska, you scoop snow.  Nebraska is a rural state. Eighty-nine percent of the cities in Nebraska have fewer than 3,000 people. Many Nebraskans – if they don’t currently live or work on a farm – are only one or two generations removed from agricultural life. It seems reasonable that a commonly-used term from the farm – like scoop – could permeate the common parlance of everyday Nebraskans.

I also wonder if the etymology of scoop has something to do with the native languages of Nebraska’s earliest immigrants. Nebraska’s prominent ancestry groups include German, Czech and Irish. Thanks to the wonders of Google Translate and a co-worker who speaks Irish, I learned that the Irish verb to scoop is scaob – which is pronounced something like *skoob*. Scaob and scoop are awfully similar, don’t you think? Could Nebraskans’ penchant for using the term scoop be a linguistic quirk left over from the Irish immigrants who settled in the state during the 19th and early 20th centuries? I’m not a linguist and I may be completely off-base, but maybe – just maybe, I’m on to something.

I can’t conclusively say why Nebraskans scoop while the rest of the United States shovels. I do know however, that language is a fickle and interesting thing. Language is transparent and it fosters communication at the same time that it is merely metaphor for the actual things and ideas it describes.

Words – their origins and use – tell stories of people. They tell stories of who people are, and how they relate to one another and the world around them.

Words create and remove power. Look no further than the current presidential election to observe the sneaky, precise and ridiculous ways that language can influence people and fashion the systems on which we build ideologies and beliefs.

Words are – in the end – what we make and use of them. I’m convinced there is no right and wrong in the scoop/shovel debate. Scooping works for Nebraskans. The rest of the U.S. can shovel, but I will forever remain a proud scooper of snow.


 

Do you have any insights or theories as to why Nebraskans scoop snow while the rest of the United States shovels it? Do you know of any other unique regional linguistic oddities? Tell me in the comments.

Posted in: What I'm thinking Tagged: Nebraska, Winter

I am Lisa Baumert. I'm a person who does a bunch of stuff and has thoughts and generally tries to live life well.

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