Day 88 - Be a Part of International Pillow Fight Day

Date: April 4th, 2010

There are few things in this world as irreverent, joyful and spontaneous as a pillow fight.  What could be better than swinging soft, delightful piles of feathers into one another and watching them explode with a delicate puff as they hit someone's face?  Unfortunately, once you get past about the age of five, there are very few opportunities to participate in pillow fights.

 Unless you go into... you know... "the arts".

I think it goes without saying that Sexy-Princess-Leia pillow fight was not what I had in mind.  Good thing there's International Pillow Fight Day.  In cities around the world, in the first weekend in April, people gather at town squares and public places to swing some pillow and have a good time.  I found out there was a local event being held in Ann Arbor and, it goes without saying, I had to be there.  Now, most cities did it on April 3rd, but Ann Arbor just had to be different so we had it on the 4th.  You may recognize the 4th of April, 2010 as Easter Sunday.  The organizers of Ann Arbor's pillow fight celebration did not.

To be fair to the organizers, April 3rd was Hash Bash.  There was a distinct possibility that participants would've collapsed laughing and then gotten the munchies for their pillows if it was held on Saturday.  For those who don't know, Hash Bash is Ann Arbor's annual ode to marijuana, held at various locations around campus.  Why they don't just go the full nine and have it on April 20th, I'll never understand.

Though driving through the intoxicated throngs to get to the photo shoot on Saturday was fairly hilarious.  I watched one person walk confidently, with poise and grace... right into the side of a car.  Well done sir, wherever you are.

Having been at UofM for seven years (that's right, count 'em), there is literally nothing that could possibility embarrass me in Ann Arbor anymore.  Whenever I wonder if I'm getting weird looks, I just remember the guy I saw walking down the road a couple winters back.  There was almost a foot of snow on the ground and he was walking barefoot down South University Ave.  He had a white tank top and basketball shorts on (and nothing else) and he was drinking whole milk from a gallon container.  Then, seemingly completely unprovoked by any outside stimulus, he stopped, turned 180 degrees, walked two steps back, broke an icicle off the overhang of the old Pinball Pete's, put it in his mouth, turned 180 degrees back and continued walking.

Seeing him made me confident that my hair would go unnoticed by the masses.

As I walked through the diag with a king sized pillow in hand and my hair in tiny ponytails that said "I'm too cool for symmetry", I started to worry that there wouldn't be but a few people there.  Surely, I reasoned, there would be at least some turnout.

 I took some crowd shots for posterity.

Turns out, thinking that something listed has happening in the diag will actually be in the diag is the kind of in-the-box thinking that isn't tolerated at UofM.  I waited around with a couple (very nice) people who were also looking for the fight for about ten minutes before we all realized that when they said diag, what they actually meant was "the corner of State and North University".  My bad.

The actual turnout, when I was there, was around 20-25 people and it varied between epic battles and short, one-on-one skirmishes.  Whenever new people showed up, someone screamed a battle cry and everybody charged them.  It was, in my humble opinion, sufficiently epic.  It was delightful and irreverent, just as I had hoped.

Also pictured: Lots of testosterone.

All that said... I only stayed for about 15-20 minutes, and that's something I'd like to be serious about for a minute.  The pillow fight was the first fairly physical thing I've tried to do as part of this project.  Because of a mix of bad habits, delicious candy and important school commitments, its also the first fairly physical thing I've done at all in a couple of months.  I was both shocked and deeply disappointed at how physically unfit I've become.  Its something that didn't particularly scare me until recently.

It is a blessing, though, that I'm doing this project.  Why?  Its not because I wouldn't have found out - I would've exercised sooner or later regardless of these other activities.  Its because I desperately want to do amazing and fun physical things and right now... I can't.  Its not that it would be hard or that I'd get tired... its that I physically can't.  It was a wake up call.  Being generally happy and confident, I haven't had the drive to correct the way I treat my body -- it didn't stop me from doing anything until now.

But now that it has, getting in shape is something I am committing to.  I said to myself and others that I wanted to run in a race sometime this year as part of the project - a 5K, 10K or marathon.  I believe that I can do it, but the time to prepare for that is now.  I have a strong sense of purpose about correcting my habits and the effect they have on my life.  Just like skipping a day would be to fail, I believe not getting healthy enough to run a race before this year is out would be a failure too.  And me and failure don't get along.  We like to avoid each other's company and I'm not about to change that policy one bit.