Plumer Hasn’t Exactly Been Playing PattiCake

May it please the court, we would like to call to the stand law clerk PattiSue Plumer Levere. Please remind the witness she is under oath and obliged to answer all questions truthfully.

Question: Now, Ms. Plumer Levere--may we call you PattiSue? Thank you--it has been brought to our attention that you are purported to have become America’s premier distance runner while graduating from Stanford Law School. Is it your purpose to strain the credulity of this court? It has been established that this is impossible outside the confines of a Doris Day movie or the pages of a Harlequin romance. Do you propose to cling to this story? Tell us, pray tell, how you could accomplish these preposterous goals?

Answer: Well, I have to admit I might have run faster if it weren’t for my law studies. And I might have learned faster if I didn’t run at all. The law is a very complicated subject. So is the 3,000 meters.

Q: Are we to understand this is some kind of a publicity stunt, a press agent’s dream? You’re not seriously asking this court to believe you could become a lawyer and an Olympic runner at the same time?!

A: Well, I took the bar examination in February. I hope I’ll make lawyer. I’ll find out in a couple of weeks if I passed or not.

Q: And the Olympic thing is merely a hobby? Or is it a hoax?

A: Wait a minute! I got in the 3,000-meter final at the Seoul Olympics. I hate this to sound like an excuse, but I came up with a serious case of food poisoning on the morning of the final or I might have done better, even medaled. I had spent most of the night before with my head between my legs trying not to throw up.

Q: Aha! So your law studies caught up to you?

A: Law studies were the least of my problems. I had almost died the year before. I have gotten pneumonia six times in my life--walking, galloping, you name the type of pneumonia. Also asthma.

Q: Excuse me! Asthma?!

A: Asthma. The pollen count was high that year.

Q: Let me understand this, Ms. PattiSue. You actually competed in the Seoul Olympics after bouts with asthma and pneumonia?

A: That’s nothing, I got hit by a cab in Tokyo a couple of years back. You ever try running with a leg that has been broken in two places?

Q: The court is trying to understand this, Ms. PattiSue. Let me take you on voir dire to see if we’re reading from the same book here. Now, you persevered with running even though you had all these physical ailments--and then you got hit by a cab in Tokyo?! Didn’t this incline you to quit running and get to the law library full time?

A: Oh, I almost quit lots of times. But it wasn’t because of illness or injuries.

Q: What was it?

A: Confidence. I had no confidence.

Q: No confidence? How did that come about?

A: Well, I had this kid sister, PollySue. She was a high school phenom. Set all kinds of records. She was the athlete in the family. I was brought up in the mountains of Colorado and didn’t have major league competition in our little town of Montrose. So, when I got to national collegiate competition, I thought, what am I doing with all these superstars? I let people beat me because I thought they were supposed to.

Q: How did you overcome that, for heaven’s sakes?

A: Brooks.

Q: I beg your pardon?

A: Brooks. Brooks Johnson. My coach. He got fed up with me. I would get in a race and say to myself, who am I to think I can run better than these girls? Brooks was blunt. Brooks isn’t nice to you. He doesn’t sugarcoat it. He said, if you’re going to beat yourself, you don’t need to train for that. He said track and field is a sport you can only take responsibility for yourself. It’s not football where you can say, well, the team didn’t block. Or the guy threw a bad pass. Pretty soon, I had lopped 50 seconds off my time. Then, I won the 5,000 in the NCAA in 1984.

Q: Sounds like Brooks Johnson was your Svengali.

A: Who?

Q: Svengali. The mastermind who hypnotized and bullied Trilby into becoming an international singing star.

A: Well, when I finished sixth in the Olympic trials in 1984, Brooks and I had a major falling-out. He accused me of wimping out. We had a big row. It’s all patched up now, but I think the turning point in my career was when the qualifying mark for inclusion in the nationals was 9:40 and I ran a 9:39.9, and I was elated. And Brooks said, “If all you want to do is run the minimum, you’re just a weekend runner.” I didn’t want to be a weekend anything.

Q: Wasn’t the finish at Seoul a major disappointment?

A: Not really. I had run a personal-best 8:45 in the heats. So, I knew my 8:59 in the finals was due to the cramps and the nausea. I was running sick. On empty. In a funny way, it told me I could belong out there with anybody. There was nobody who could blow me away.

Q: You’re going to tell this court you turned into Superwoman?

A: No, but I’m going to say not one in 100 gave me a chance to make the Olympic team at Indianapolis in ’88. Then, you have to remember 50 women enter the Olympic 3,000 and only 14 make the final. I was one of them. I went to Europe last fall and I beat Paula Ivan. She was the gold medalist in the 1,500 at Seoul and the silver medalist in the 3,000. I broke Mary Slaney’s American record in the 5,000 at Stockholm. I won in Lausanne, Bilbao, and in Scotland I beat Yvonne Murray in the 3,000 and she won the bronze at Seoul. I ran three 3,000-meter races in four days, and each one was faster than the last.

Q: Is Brooks satisfied?

A: Brooks is never satisfied.

Q: What will it take?

A: Well, I’m running in the women’s mile at the Jack in the Box track meet this Sunday. My program is geared toward the Barcelona Olympics in ’92. I’m working in a law office. I hope to get my license and practice labor law. I got married in February.

Q: This court finds the witness in contempt of the traditional American work ethic of 40 hours a week and sentences her to two years of community service--she has to win the gold medal and settle the bus strike.