Anyway, last Saturday, I went out for what I had planned to be a five-mile run. The weather was supposed to be clear, with temps in the low fifties. Now let's get something straight right now. I hate running. Despise it. I do not lose myself in my thoughts, because there is a single thought that overwhelms all others -- how much longer until I can stop? However, I love FINISHING running. And that is why I do it.
I quickly realized it wasn't going to be my day. There was a terrible headwind, and with the wind chill, the temp was down closer to 40 than 50. After about a mile, I decided to cut the run to three miles. Seeing as I haven't really started my training for the 2012 Olympics in earnest, I figured that would be OK. Two miles into the run, I was headed uphill on a relatively busy road, one that I'd run on hundreds of times before, when I lost my balance on and face-planted, half on the hardpack shoulder, half on the roadway. As I stumbled, I knew there was no traffic coming, but I knew that it was a pretty crappy place to eat it.
In a shining example of shameless human vanity, I checked to see if anyone had seen me fall before I checked the extent of my injuries. I had jammed my shoulder, wrenched my hip, and scraped up my hand and knee. Luckily though, nothing serious. And far more importantly, no one had seen me bite it. As I finished off the run, it got me thinking about a strange week I had back in 2008, about a month before my daughter was born.
The strangeness of that week started during a run that day as well -- on that same road, in fact. It was that day I realized that much of what we experience is out of our control. Within ten minutes of leaving my house on that April afternoon, I was chased by a dog and someone in a passing car threw a cup of water on me (at least I hope it was water).
The strangeness of that week started during a run that day as well -- on that same road, in fact. It was that day I realized that much of what we experience is out of our control. Within ten minutes of leaving my house on that April afternoon, I was chased by a dog and someone in a passing car threw a cup of water on me (at least I hope it was water).
The next day, I was on Interstate 95, driving to a law conference in northern Virginia, when I found myself in the midst of an unbelievable police chase, the kind you see on Cops. I saw at least a dozen police vehicles giving chase. The suspect vehicle, a small compact, zipped around me in the breakdown lane doing about 90, and a state trooper roared past a few seconds later, nearly clipping my front left bumper. I briefly swerved to avoid a collision with the police car, and I was lucky I didn't lose control of my car.
Two days later, while I was still at the conference, our dog got loose, having slipped through the back gate (which I had forgotten to latch the day I left for the conference). She'd been gone for a good thirty minutes before my wife (eight months pregnant and caring for our then-2-year-old son) realized she was gone. The dog made it about a mile, but very luckily for us, she happened across a kind family that was good enough to check her tags, upon which our phone number was stamped.
All this happened in the span of about seventy-two hours.
Here's the thing: I am a textbook worrier (wisely, my wife did not tell me about the dog incident until after the dog was safely back at home). I worry about the stove being left on, about our furnace exploding, about my plane crashing, about my son falling from the top of the monkeybars, about any white conversion van I see on the street -- because, seriously, who drives white conversion vans other than child molesters? So this was a particularly troubling week for me in that it showed me, at least on some level, that there is not a whole lot of point in worrying about things.
It's pretty unsettling to realize that for all the worrying you do, you might still have an out-of-control dump truck out there with your name on it.
So naturally, I'm worried about that.
Here's the thing: I am a textbook worrier (wisely, my wife did not tell me about the dog incident until after the dog was safely back at home). I worry about the stove being left on, about our furnace exploding, about my plane crashing, about my son falling from the top of the monkeybars, about any white conversion van I see on the street -- because, seriously, who drives white conversion vans other than child molesters? So this was a particularly troubling week for me in that it showed me, at least on some level, that there is not a whole lot of point in worrying about things.
It's pretty unsettling to realize that for all the worrying you do, you might still have an out-of-control dump truck out there with your name on it.
So naturally, I'm worried about that.
