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Show . / ^ ^ I \ y The Great Escape • 1 [r ^ j T h e Great Escape In the Guinness Book, there are very few world records held by Uruguayans. One is the "Most important pencil collection," numbered at 5,500 different designs, logotypes, and brands. Another is the "Largest mortadela," a kind of boloney, which I saw myself in 1995 at the annual Rural Exposition in the Prado. It was big, for sure, but not that big. Maybe fifteen feet long and two feet in diameter, all wrapped in red-lettered Cativelh-brand plastic under bright lights and signs announcing its prominence and preeminence. If you had the wherewithal and the careatall, you could break that record easily. A third record, the oldest, is in the "Greatest jail breaks" category. Says the Guinness Book: In September 1971 Raul Sendic and 105 other Tupamaro guerillas, plus five nonpolitical prisoners, escaped from a Uruguayan prison through a tunnel 298 ft long. This is the best kind of record, an incidental record; it is not sought, not dumb luck, and not without substantial effort. It is not "Tallest man" or "Oldest living person," which you can't get, no matter how hard you try, unless you're meant (genetically, cosmically) for it. It's also not "Biggest pizza" or "Radio DJ marathon," which are relatively easy to break, given the will and some endurance, and which are set and broken (repeatedly) only by people seeking to break the record. And, finally, it's not an accidental record, like the one that has haunted me since I first saw it back when I was in third grade: the kid who spent the most time underwater without dying. It was freezing cold water under ice, and his body effectively shut down. He ended up with permanent brain damage and very thick glasses that made his eyes cartoonish and empty. The Tupamaros' prison break is the kind of record you get from having done something extraordinary for some other purpose, worthy and worthwhile in itself. |
