After a while all my running routes get a little boring. You can file this one under “first world problems.” I try to vary them and I’ve sought out the back roads and corners of subdivisions nearby. Google maps and good old-fashioned exploration keep new and different sights in front of me as the runs get longer. Katie and I are up to 9 miles this weekend and it’s getting tougher to find routes we have not run before. While I am comfortable to head out and explore, Katie would rather stay closer to home and I understand why. It can be mentally taxing to remember long routes with lots of turns and to cope with the distance we need to cover if we want and need to get home quickly. All mental energy better spent on pushing through the last two miles when the tank nears empty.
Running high mileage routes close to home means overlap and repeats. I pass people running in the opposite direction, sometimes at multiple points as our routes intersect. I run past yards in various stages of mowing, watering, weeding. I run past kids creating sidewalk murals with Day-Glo chalk and try not to ruin earlier works with my shoes. Since last fall when my commitment to running began in earnest, I’ve seen more gradual change as well. The seasons come and go and houses decorated for Halloween turn to Christmas, Valentine’s Day and now Saint Patrick’s Day. “For Sale” signs grow “Sold” stickers while some houses grow foreclosure notices overnight. With the weather warming up people gather outside and kids play in the yards breaking in tennis rackets, soccer balls and baseball gloves from winter storage. While all this change speaks of growth and the inevitable cycles we go through, there are other changes I see which remind me that running tends to induce warm and fuzzy reveries which rarely coincide with the reality around me.
On a recent run we crossed an intersection two or three times as we looped through the neighborhood. I saw the graffiti sprayed on the white blocks of the crosswalk and street signs on our first pass and seemed to see more and more instances each time we passed. The tags were amateurish: initials and crudely rendered line drawings of male genitalia, clearly the work of twelve to eighteen year-old boys. While I got into my fair share of mischief growing up, I never felt the urge to tag things with symbols and profanity. The potential repercussions were never worth the short-lived thrill promised by the hiss of the can and the resulting “work of art.” With each pass by the markings I got more and more upset. My wife had to look at this stuff. Kids crossed this street daily on their way to school and moms would face the awkward question “Mommy, what’s that?”
On our final pass by the intersection my thoughts turned from those who would have to look at the scrawled initials and crude drawings to those who created them and their parents. Somewhere a dad who works too hard to keep his family in the too-large house with the beautiful yard and the two new cars is missing cans of black spray paint he uses to paint over the rust on the fence that keeps his family’s Goldendoodle from interacting with the Portuguese Water Dog next door.
It will be weeks, maybe months before he notices it’s gone. Maybe he will go for a run to blow off steam from a long week at work and come across the markings made by his fourteen year-old son who seems to be drifting away more and more as the months pass by. Maybe he will laugh as he remembers the days when he was young, never thinking of his own son. Or maybe he will draw his eyebrows down and sigh wondering what kind of parent allows their children to run rampant through the neighborhood at night with cans of spray paint.
As I went farther and farther down that particular rabbit hole I realized I needed to quit or I would drive myself crazy. But not before I fantasized about staking out the scene of the crime just to see that some justice was done. As the scenes played out in my mind like a third-rate revenge film I realized this was not the path of a mentally healthy individual. It was also incredibly hypocritical of me. Though I never scrawled bad graffiti all over my neighborhood I was surely no angel. In fact, what struck me as I wrenched my thoughts back to the run was the internal change I made at some point in the last two years. Between changing jobs, getting married and buying a house, I altered the way I process the world. Graffiti is now a scourge upon my neighborhood and I am planning on how I would deal with the hoodlums if I ever caught them in the act. Where did I come from?
By the time I run by that intersection again I’m sure the markings will be gone. We all have to get that out of our system early on before it grows into something more sinister. I might have to look at a bad drawing of a penis for a few more weeks but at least my mailbox remains unmolested and the magnolia tree in the front yard is free of soggy, torn toilet paper. Fingers crossed.
Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment