THIS IS US
The Only Time I Ever Saw My Grandmother Run
She ran at me
I recently discovered a big difference between children and grown-ups:
Children run whenever they get a chance, and grown-ups don’t, even though grown-ups control the world and could run everywhere and always.
I’m not talking about running for exercise, which psychologists have proven is bad for your psyche’s knees. I’m talking about running for fun. Not chasing fun, not fleeing death, not attempting to round out the buttocks. The fun is in the running, and the fun is the goal.
Go to a family reunion and you’ll notice the grown-ups are acting like planets, their movements graceful and predictable and relatively slow, while the children zip around like liberated space trash, using the gravity of their ponderous relatives to slingshot their way into higher speeds.
A few months ago, one of my nephews asked me a telling question:
“Uncle Dan? Can you run?”
He wasn’t inviting me on a run. He was asking if I’m capable of running, asking if I can do better than my top speed, which is angry walking.
In other words, he’s never seen me run. And this means I haven’t run in the presence of the family in nearly a decade.
