The Second Wind

As I lay on my couch one morning, suffering the effects of the night before – started with a beer, switched to wine at dinner, topped it all off with a postprandial bourbon – I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I should have stopped at the second drink, instead of the fifth. Or was it the sixth?

I don’t’ want to make this sound like an every week occurrence. It isn’t. Not even every month. It might happen two to three times a year. I start and I don’t stop. Despite knowing the inevitable consequences, I keep going. What is it that makes me do it? What pushes me past the edge of moderation and over the cliff of inebriation?

I’m a lush, you say? Keep that to yourself. Okay, I do like the hooch. I won’t deny it, but that’s not the cause of this problem. I know what it is. It’s a psychological delusion, and I can tell I’m not the only one who suffers from it. It’s called the second wind.

Oh, you have one too, you say? Hah! You mean you’re like me and you only think you have one. Somehow, I’ve convinced myself that the second wind actually exists when in reality all it means is I took fifteen minutes to gulp down five glasses of water.

Okay, I’ve waited two commercial breaks for another beer. Got my second wind now. I’m raring to go.

Sure, right before I stumble and chip my tooth on a coffee table.

Who’s up for Jaeger’ shots?

I’ve got bad news for you, and for me. The second wind is a myth. It doesn’t exist. It’s in the same category as the Lock Ness Monster and Sasquatch. I know. I’ve sprinted down the second wind road for years now, most of the time with my pants off, and I know from first-hand experience that there’s no such thing.

And before I go any further, just forget about catching your third and fourth winds. If you’re on your fourth wind, it means you’re walking to the supermarket in your boxers at two a.m. because you had a craving for Ring Dings.

How did this happen? (I’ll leave the Ring Ding story for another time.) Where does the belief in a second wind come from? What are its origins? Who gave us all a push down hangover highway? I had to know.

I decided to start my search down on the waterfront, amongst the sailors of the world. They’d been around. Surely, they’d have some idea.

It didn’t take me long to pick up a critical clue. At a tiny dive bar not far from the harbor, I found myself sitting across from a salty old-timer. “Looking for Old Windy, are you?” he asked.

“Old Windy? Is that what you call him?”

“Sure, he’s been a buddy of mine for years.” He hoisted a mug of grog. “In fact, I think he’s about to join us.”

“Maybe I should go,” I said. “We’ve had a falling out.”

“Who hasn’t?” The sailor chugged the libation down. “He always comes back to you though, especially if you’re out for a night on the town.”

“He does like a good time,” I said.

“He sure does.”

I joined him for one, but I wasn’t ready to reconcile with “Old Windy” yet. Was he really an actual person? That was news to me. I decided to continue my search by turning to scholars, so I took a trip to the local university where I sat down with a professor of classics and ancient languages. After introductions, I explained the nature of my quest.

A gray-haired man with a goatee sat across from me behind a desk as wide as a Midwestern plain. “You’re referring, of course, to the Roman deity, Secundus Ventus,” he said.

“A Roman god?”

“More like an immortal nuisance.”

“Who was he? What was he responsible for?”

“He was Bacchus’s right hand man, responsible for giving the Roman people the impression, false or otherwise, that they could party all night long.”

“The god of good times. It makes sense. So the Romans created him?”

“Oh, no.” He pulled a book down from a shelf behind him. “The truth is that the second wind is as old as humanity itself.” He flipped to a page and spread it open on his desk. “The earliest known mention of the second wind is a cave drawing in the south of France.”

I looked at the image on the page. A stick figure lay on the ground, injured or ill, a flurry of ocher lines passing over him to indicate a storm, while another stick figure held two fingers up in the air.

“So even Neanderthals suffered from the second wind,” I said.

He nodded. “Even the Neanderthals.”

I left the professor, wiser but without an answer. The second wind was a myth and a rumor, just as I had thought, but I still had no idea who created it. If I ever get my hands on him, he’s in for a rough time – just as soon as I take another half-dozen aspirin and get out of bed. Probably, sometime tomorrow.

Keep this in mind the next time you’re out drinking and you think you’ve caught your second wind: nothing good ever comes from the second wind.

If the crazy notion does enter your head, do yourself a favor and head home. You won’t regret it. And if you ever find out the name of the person who spread this vicious rumor, let me know. I have a couple of things I’d like to say to him. Not so loud though; whisper it, please.