Volume 4, Issue 45: Vince Coleman

"He has the sort of wheels that will change a game in an instant."

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Three hundred and sixty-four days a year, I am boring old Will Leitch, the guy who types all the time, curses too much when he’s in traffic or watching an Illini game, spends too much time ranking Richard Linklater movies in his head. But one day a year I am someone else.

One day a year: I am Dashman.

Dashman is the mascot of Barrow Elementary School’s, my children’s school, yearly fundraiser the Barrow Dash, in which every kid solicits their relatives to “sponsor” them, paying a certain amount of money for each lap around the gymnasium that they run. Dashman’s job is to inspire the kids to run as many laps as they can. Each class runs for 15 minutes, with volunteers counting their laps and then reporting them to the teacher: The kids that finish first, second and third get a trophy. This event begins at 8:30 a.m. and goes until school lets out at 2:30, which means by the end of the day, I’ve run about 18-24 miles. By 2:30, Dashman is less “Dashman” than “Canbarelywalkman.”

But it is always, always worth it.

I take being Dashman very seriously, which is to say, Dashman is not merely me in a mask, cape and wristbands adorned with the letter D: Dashman, as I play him, has a backstory. I wouldn’t even say I play Dashman; I inhabit him. I go full Method. I’m like Daniel Day-Lewis; don’t even try to refer to me as “Will” while I’m in costume—I won’t respond.

Dashman does not live here in Athens. He lives on the Planet Dash and only flies to Athens the day of the Barrow Dash in order to fulfill his one true purpose in life: To outrun children. It is his singular focus and his sole passion and reason for anything: Being faster than all children, every single one. He trains all year on the Planet Dash, with pictures of all the Barrow children taped to the wall of his gym, where he pushes himself to physical extremes so that he make sure that none of them ever, ever run faster than he does. (In my backstory, this is because of an absent Dashfather who was killed when Dashman was a Dashboy because he was unable to outrun a tiger.) Nothing in his life matters other than outrunning children at the Barrow Dash. This has also made him overly self-confident and braggadocious: He is constantly telling the children, when he sees them before each race, how slow they are, how they’re going to lose, how no one has ever been faster than him and no one ever will be. Sure, they can try to outrun the Dashman. That is why we are here, after all! But it is a fool’s errand, a tragic mistake, an exercise in futility to ever attempt to outrun the Dashman. It cannot be done.

This, of course, leads to every kid outrunning the Dashman, because kids love nothing more than making an adult look foolish by being better than them at something. (They usually flash an “L” at me when they pass me and do a Fortnite dance.) This is the point of the Barrow Dash, after all: To get kids running as many laps as they can. Which they get to do while laughing at the Dashman, who they keep passing, and mocking, over and over until their 15 minutes are done.

Thus, if you were to have watched me be the Dashman yesterday—because yesterday was the Barrow Dash, which is why the mere act of typing this sentence makes every part of my body scream in pain—you would have seen little kids zooming past me, as I howled in protest, things like, "Hey, when did they start making these kids so fast?” and “That kid’s got rockets in her shoes!” And then, after getting smoked by kids from kindergarten through fifth grade all day, Dashman heads back to Planet Dash again, to train harder, to learn from his mistakes, to defeat next year’s children in the way that, this year, he could not.

It is also a role, I’ve found, I must keep up all calendar round. When I’m at Barrow any other day throughout the school year, kids will quite see me and quite reasonably think I am Dashman, since I look just like him, only without a mask and cape. I explain to them that I am in fact Dashman’s brother—which is why we look alike—and that I can send him a message if they want, though Dashman is pretty busy with his relentless training regimen. They claim to believe me, though a little kid a few months ago took me aside to whisper, “I know you’re Dashman, Dashman. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” Then he hugged me. That happened a lot yesterday, actually. Kids love superheroes, and even if this “superhero” is just wearing a cheap cloth mask and is constantly telling them they’re running too fast, you darned kid, they are nonetheless thrilled to have a caped crusader of their own right there in front of them. And they always want to hug Dashman. This was particularly true last year, the first Dash we’d done since the pandemic: You could palpably sense kids’ isolation, their need for connection. By the end of the race with the first graders, half the class was hanging onto Dashman’s legs, begging for hugs. Dashman, despite his constant disappointment of being outrun by children, was ever happy to oblige.

Dash Day is, needless to say, one of my favorite days of the year.

I only have two more years left of this. Yesterday was my son William’s final Dash Day: He’ll be off to middle school next year, where they’re way too cool for costumed characters beamed in from Planet Dash. My son Wynn will be in the fourth grade next year, which means I have only two Dash Days left as Dashman before my kids are gone, and it would probably a little bit weird to keep running around with kids at a school that my kids don’t even go to. And all told, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to run like this anyway. Becoming a runner—something I only did because I promised to quit smoking when my wife got pregnant and thus needed something to keep me occupied and appropriately obsessed—has unquestionably changed my life. I’ve run multiple half-marathons, I run about 32 miles a week on average and any day that I don’t run I feel gross, bloated and unhealthy. My goal this year was to run more miles than my all-time record of 1,578, and after yesterday’s Dash, I’m almost there.

But I am getting older. Already my body has gotten accustomed to the amount of running I do—the calories just don’t burn as quickly as they used to—and I’ll have to find some other exercise to supplement my running or even replace it entirely, particularly if my knees eventually decided to give out, which sure seems like a real possibility. There will be a time when I look back fondly about being able to cheerfully run 20 miles with schoolchildren. That time may sooner than I would like. Dashman may have to go soon. His planet needs him.

This last Thursday, while on one final warm up for the Dash, I ran into Kevin, the very nice man who was the Dashman before I took over, before his kids moved to middle school and I replaced him. I told him that it was Dash Week, that the kids still love it, that I’ve taken his beloved character and gone in a weirdly Method direction with him. I also mentioned a certain wistfulness that my time as Dashman would be coming to a close in a couple of years.

Kevin laughed. “Oh, you’re always Dashman,” he said. He then told me how he’d been out running a few weeks ago when a group of burly, jacked football players from Clarke Central High School went blowing past him as part of an endurance drill during one of their practices. They were perfect physical specimens, at the peak of their abilities, flying by a middle-aged man like he was nothing, not giving him a second thought.

And then, as they made it a few dozen feet ahead of him, these massive football players stopped, turned around and started waving at him.

“Hey, Dashman!” they yelled. “You’re the best, Dashman!” Then they ran off, far into the distance, smoking the poor Dashman again, but, as it turned out, never actually leaving him behind.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. From the 1994 World Cup to This One, The New York Times. I would write about canned borscht if they asked me to.

2. Your Fun USMNT-Netherlands FAQ Preview, New York. Look, I got it to you before the game started.

3. Your USMNT-Iran Recap, New York. SO FUN.

4. John Wick Adjacent Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. Updated with Violent Night.

5. Man, I Have Voted For Raphael Warnock a LOT, Medium. Seriously, five times in 25 months.

6. Top Ten Old Guy Free Agents, MLB.com. In baseball world, “old guy” means “35 or older.”

7. Anybody Left in Your Life Who Doesn’t Have Covid Yet? Medium. I am almost out of people.

8. The Case For the Angels Following the Phillies’ Lead and Going For It, MLB.com. We could all be the Phillies!

9. The World Cup Is Great For Realizing How Old You’re Getting, Medium. The last time the U.S. made the World Cup was when my son Wynn was born. Now he’s making fun of my driving.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “The Fabelmans,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “Bones and All.”

Also, this was nice:

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we reviewed the Georgia-Georgia Tech game and previewed the SEC Championship Game.

Seeing Red, no show this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“How Hospice Became a For-Profit Hustle,” Ava Kofman, The New Yorker. I had been idly wondering about this, as I got older, and this sure does answer a lot of questions.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Gardening at Night,” R.E.M. I’m going to be at the Chronic Town 40th anniversary show at the 40 Watt here in Athens in a couple of weeks—40 years!—and it’s remarkable how great these songs (recorded within 18 months of the band’s founding) sounded immediately.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also: I am not immune to the pleasures of Spotify Wrapped, or, for that matter, sharing my 100 Most Played Songs of 2022. You might notice that Wilco, Band of Horses, Spoon and Big Thief came out with albums this year.

Have a great weekend, all. USA! USA!

Best,
Will