5K race, heartbreak, walls, clicks and other ramblings

So I ran my first 5k race since High School. Interestingly enough it was at my old high school on a modified version of our Cross Country course. Right before the race, a fellow Alum asked me what my goal was. I replied, to not embarrass myself too badly. I didn’t, and I actually did better than I thought. Partly because I usually run by myself, so I do think I ran faster with the “competition”. But I also I realized my iPhone App, Runkeeper isn’t properly tracking my runs, it listed the 3.1 miles as only 2.93. I believe this is because the course at Bullis turned in on itself in several place, and went through a wooded trail (Oh Puke Hill, you weren’t as big as I remember, but you were still painful.) The run was similar to my neighborhood workouts, I’ll pop into cul de saqs, up and down dead ends, and weather/light permitting, I’ll take the heavily wooded Cabin John Trail from Goya to Tuckerman. I don’t think the GPS is capturing my full distance, making me appear slower than I actually am. Not that I am still not painfully slow compared to High School but I am getting there. And as a wise friend frequently reminds me, it’s the journey, not the destinations.

After the race another dear friend of mine asked me how it went. When I explained that I ran faster than I thought, she quipped that she would set a personal speed record just getting “the heck out” of her old high school. I have to admit, I understood the feeling. No matter where you were on the popularity spectrum, high school is painful. I think that is where most of us really learn to build walls, to varying degrees of height and depth. The walls are a survival mechanism for the countless intended and unintended hurts we all give to one another. But sometimes I wonder if those walls do more harm than good. Do we make ourselves into the proverbial bubble boy. When we do let things/people through, are we that much more raw/fresh/immune comprised….

I say high school is when we learn to build the walls but in truth it goes back much further. Partly for me, high school sticks out because I went to the same school from 5th trough 12th grade, so it is all kind of blurs together as one school/experience in my head. But I know it went back further. I have some clear memories of early childhood. One in particular I have never forgotten. I was 5 or 6 and some little kid wanted to play with a group of us. I don’t know why but I didn’t want him to play with us so I taunted this poor kid relentlessly until he went home crying. I never forgot the look on his face. I can also remember being on the other end of that type experience. Sadly, I am now starting to see it with my four year old; and it is HEARTBREAKING! Josh is a very social kid, and has a lot of friends, but even at 4 you start to see clicks form. There are two boys in particular in his class, who really don’t play with him, then a third who seems to go along with the other two when they are around. Josh must have told me 10 times last week how these three boys would not let him play Super Power Rangers with them on the playground at school. So my first thought was excellent, two of those boys aren’t particularly well behaved and well and I really don’t want you to know what Super Power Rangers are anyways, hence why the little TV we watch is PBS. Then I saw his hurt, and I just wanted to hold him and squeeze the pain way. But that hurt is nothing compared to what I have seen at Shul lately. There is this girl, she is a year older than Josh (he digs the older girls) so she is in kindergarten and is no longer in preschool with him, but he still sees her at Torah Tots on Shabbat, and Josh just LUV LUV LUVs her and she is just plain mean to him. He looks at her all googly eyes and tries to talk to her, and she just ignores him or worse, tells him to go away. IT IS PAINFUL. This is one of the most social, friendly and emotionally intelligent 4 year olds you will ever meet. I have no doubt Josh will do fine in life. He is everything I mentioned before, plus handsome, athletic, and has an amazing mind. I know in life he will have his heart broken and I have no doubt he will break his share of hearts, but it pains me to know the walls start forming so early in life.