Barred From Kissing Boston Marathoners, Wellesley Students Will Instead Kiss Each Other, Playfully at First, According to Man’s Imagination
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Students at Wellesley College, around the halfway point of the Boston Marathon course, are being asked this year not to offer their customary kisses to passing runners, meaning they will have no choice but to kiss each other instead, according to the imagination of one local man.
“It’s only logical,” said Chet Donnelly, 28, a single heterosexual male and avid runner who will compete in his third Boston Marathon next week. “The excitement of race day, maybe a few libations, all those young women looking to kiss someone.”
Donnelly paused.
“Young college women,” he said. “All those college women bodies.”
“Together,” he added.
Students at Wellesley, a private all-female college, have a decades-long tradition of thronging the course to cheer for runners, creating a so-called “scream tunnel” that runners can hear well before they see it. In more recent years, they’ve begun adding kisses to the mix, going so far as to wave signs soliciting smooches from marathoners.
This year, due to COVID restrictions, the Boston Athletic Association has asked everyone to refrain from kissing. For its part, Wellesley officials are urging students “to not touch the runners or have any physical contact as they go by.”
Immediately after hearing this, Donnelly said, he imagined the student-on-student kissing scenario, which he’s spent hours developing in his mind.
“It will start innocently, almost like a joke or something,” he said. “Like, one [student] will sort of say, ‘Well, I’ve gotta kiss somebody,’ and then she’ll peck the woman next to her on the cheek, and then that person will laugh and kiss another student, but this time on the lips, like, just brushing their lips together, and then they’ll feel this spark, you know?”
After that, Donnelly said, “nature will take its course.”
Reached by phone for comment, several Wellesley students called a reporter “weirdo,” and worse, then hung up.
Donnelly said he’s ready for race day and especially looking forward to passing Wellesley.
“That’s always a high point of the race,” said Donnelly. “But this year… Wow. I can’t wait.”
