6/21/07 - Virginia is for Runners

So you know how when you end a relationship everywhere you look you see couples. Like the instant that your relationship crashed into bits the entire rest of the population somehow became the world’s happiest couple. Everywhere you look people are holding hands, walking arm in arm, using the pause at traffic lights as an excuse to smooch, and you know if you could hear them they’d be saying things like schmoopy and snugglekins. And it transcends age. Now that you’re single even the 13 yr old pimply kids and the wrinkly old grandpas have someone to call their very own. I don’t know how this happens, it just seems to be a universal invariant. When you lose something all you see is that everyone else seems to have found it.

I can now say, with complete authority, that this phenomenon extends beyond being newly single to being newly broken. Everywhere I turn people are running. I mean seriously everywhere, at all times of day, all shapes and sizes. It was 900 degrees here on Monday with 300% humidity and the whole of the population of Arlington was out running. As of Saturday at 6pm we were a nation of fatties but I bust up my ankle and shazaam everyone’s magically transformed into Forest Gump. I suppose I should be comforted to some extent that my incapacitation seems to have resulted into an all consuming fitness trend. I mean even the 13yr old pimply kid was out for a jog with his new girlfriend this morning.