How you can tell who is a Walker and who isn’t

I’m sure you all think that you know what it means to be a walker. After all, you tell me, “Emanuel, after all, I tell you, walking is just putting two feet and two legs in front of the other again and again until a walking motion is developed!” And this is true enough, I suppose—of walking at its most basic level. However, a True Walker (capital T, capital W) knows the difference between the “dabblers of walk” and the more serious Walking Professionals.

The difference between the two is spacious:

1. Most people are occasional, weak, and informal walkers or what I like to call the “walking dilettantes.”
2. Then there are the powerful, truthful, explosive walkers who walk from power and birthright in a world they know is designed for walkers. They recognize that walking in itself is an expressive act. I like to call these folks the “Walking Professionals.”

Friends, I am a professional Walker. When I get up I don’t simply use my legs to walk across the room to put my copy of Edgar J. Simpson’s Birds of the World of Only Central Europe, Circa 1440 on the shelf and pick up DeGeiry’s famous 1865  Code of Chivalry for Mustard Bearing-Plant Catchers: a Case Study of Mollusks and Mucusoidal Algae—I don’t use not crawling to my bathroom of erotic marble fixtures and frilly curtains of red lamè when a pee-pee is in order as an excuse to say that I’m a professional walker. No. Instead I walk to places. From places. Around places. At right angles of places (this is often called a “corner”). There are miles racked up—many of them—no matter the inclement of weather. A Professional Walker will walk two and a half miles home in a windy, 20 degree squall—because something is in their blood, their bones, which make them want to walk until their balls freeze off.

How do I know that I, Emanuel K. Rubestein Ph.D., am a Professional Walker? Why that’s simple. In 1893 Dr. Jim “randy feet” Brownswagger created the hallmark five definitive characteristics that label a Professional Walker—and I have all of them.

Dr. Jim “randy feet” Brownswagger’s five hallmarks of the Professional Walker:

1. You must walk at least 2-3 miles a day on a daily basis (no electric wheelchairs!)
2. You must walk at least 5 miles a day on a weekly (or bi-monthly) basis.
3. You must have a characteristic butt-sway™ that comes from a powerful walker—and is their hallmark sense of confidence.
4. You must have the ability to use the butt-sway™ to make car-and-carriage riders feel inferior.
5. You must develop a spiritual sensitiveness—and type of refinement about “the pavement experience of the walker” that cannot be expressed to others.

Other walkers

One of the most powerful walkers in the animal kingdom is the simple backyard puma concolor, or common mountain lion. A mountain lion will cover 5, sometimes 10 miles a day. They have a powerful lower structure that lends them to be powerful walkers. A mountain lion was observed to be making rounds around his 30 square mile territory by following the trail of dogs and cats in people’s yards that he was dining on. After nearly 10 dogs had been massacred people got fed-up and had him killed by a bounty hunter. However, the real moral of the story was that he was covering this 30 mile territory in under four days!! That means an overall walk tally of nearly 8 miles a day!! You do not have to eat people’s pets to learn a lesson from this type of endurance. Just keep in mind the success rate of an animal that covers this large area of land through Professional Walking!

How can you too become a Professional Walker?

The first thing you need to do is to set yourself in front of a full-length mirror. Be reasonable with yourself. Ask yourself “Do I really have the ‘type of endurance’ to be a professional walker, even if I have advanced scoliosis?” Or maybe you were crippled in a terrible accident. However, if you have two feet and two legs and are able to stand on them, then you are probably in good enough order. Now bend your knees a bit and let your hip jut out to the left. Feel the sexy power in your lower buttock filling up the room. Like this? Want others too to feel your sexy power? Then walking is for you. Walk across the bathroom floor like you regularly do. Notice how stiff and boring it is—how creaky. Now roll your butt out while you walk—back and forth—feel the butt roll out—do you know how good you’d feel doing this in a crowded intersection in front of thousands of chugging and pathetic cars? Yes? Then you might have a calling. The butt-sway™ is yours!!

After you discover your inner butt-sway™ —that has been dying to get out—you should start practicing dry runs of Professional Walking. Do this late at night if you are still nervous about the power of your butt-sway™. Have a friend drop you off at an unknown location at least a mile away from your house—and work it—work it—all the way home. You should do this every night—until you have worked up to being able to walk two and a half miles in under 30 minutes.

Note: if you live near the ocean do not have your friend drop you off a mile out to sea by boat. Professional Walking in the water is very unmanageable—and Dr. C. Lufus did a study in the early nineties that showed that the butt-sway™ was also a powerful attractant to sharks. Do not also have your friend drop you off at the top of a mountain. Mountain lions jealously guard their power-walk secrets and might make a fierce adversary if they see you Professionally Walking through their territory at night.

Lastly, do not have your friend drop you off at the top of a large waterfall either—pretending to power-walk as you fall to your death is not Professional Walking and only the very lazy will attempt it. There is no substitute for hard work—the butt-sway™ cannot be perfected over night—it must be developed through rigorous practice. Once you have gotten moderately good at the butt-sway™, you can use it to make all the weak fools in cars and children in strollers feel inferior!! Now you are a Professional Walker!!

For further information:

Hopefully, what I have told you has given you a taste for the glamorous world of Professional Walking while also educating you on the time and discipline a dedicated Walker trainee must commit too. For more information on Professional Walking please write to:

Emanuel K. Rubestein Ph.D.
777 Widgit-Teatum Lane
Croatia, Texachusetts
77713

Remember… professional walking doesn’t just separate the professional walkers from people who just walk to get places… professional walking separates the professional walkers from the other people who aren’t professionals.

-Jim “randy feet” Brownswagger, M.D.

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Hannah Rodabaugh received her MA in English from Miami University (Miami of Ohio) in 2008, and she received her MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School in 2010. She is currently a part-time instructor for both Community College of Denver and Naropa University. Her work was included in Flim Forum Press’ anthology A Sing Economy (2008). Her work was also featured in Five Oxford Poets, a documentary about women’s experimental writing that premiered at the Cambridge Women’s Poetry Festival at Cambridge University (2006). In her free time, she designs free miniature chapbooks (and ironic pamphlets) with uniquely collaged covers. She also enjoys reading about animals, hiking, birding, and getting over-excited about peaches at the farmers market.