Day Three: Ran 3 miles, Total so far - 8 miles, Total to go - 992 miles
It was another sunny day. This time not as cold as yesterday nor as windy, and I had a hat. I decided to run at the SMU outdoor track again. Despite the warmer weather there was only one other person at the track when I started my run....he did not stay long, replaced to two older run/walk/run/walkers. They too did not last long....one of them asking if I knew where the nearest bathroom was...while I was wondered if his age had anything to do with his weak bladder and even sadder, if I was looking into the face of tomorrow?
But before I even reached the track I started thinking of immortality. There is an old Chinese proverb that I have often quoted, even to my own children. It says that if you want to be immortal you should plant a tree, write a book or have a child (well, actually a son, but then they were not sensitive and politically correct in the days when these proverbs were, well, becoming proverbs...which made me wonder how sayings become proverbs, what the standards are...and who decides..like the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, but I digress). My kids always joke that I am three times a God because I have three kids...and have published books (a Children's Book entitled Why Alligators Don't Have Wings; a Religious Book entitled Life On the High wire, Faith and a Man's Search for Balance; and a lawyer advice book, The Law Firm Associates Guide to Connecting with Colleagues, among them. I have certainly planted many trees in my life including two in my front yard in the suburban house I currently call home.
But what started me thinking of immortality was the statue of Doak Walker in football uniform that graces the remodeled Doak Walker Plaza in front of the Dedman Center for Lifetime Sports and adjacent to the track. Doak was the greatest athelete SMU ever produced. Now that is immortality if I ever saw it. It made me think of how making touchdowns and breaking records could also be a path to immortality, at least for some. Was my proverb wrong? No, just not complete...limited by its context. I suspect in ancient China when the proverb was...oh here we go again, when the proverb became a proverb, they did not know of touchdowns and football so we should forgive them missing this fourth path to immortality.....and then maybe the proverb is about immortality for mere mortals who are not football stars and never could be...people like me. Virtually everyman (person) can bring children into the world or plant a tree...but then the argument fails at writing a book...and yet, the proverb does not say the book has to be published....see the discourse that can populate your brain as you run monotonously around a tract 12 times to reach 3 miles?
Which brings me to the second part of this post...frozen chocolate mousse cake. To help me finish the three mile run this morning I employed a technique I often use of dividing the run into parts and celebrating each accomplishment....slivers of the total if you will. For three miles I needed to run 12 laps. At lap one I had run 1/12th. At lap two I had run 1/6th. At lap three I had run 1/4th and at lap 4 I had run 1/3rd...you get the picture...I began to see the track as a large pie and I was consuming slices of differing sizes as I completed more of the laps. Suddenly I had a flashback to the time my ex-wife, Kay, had prepared a wonderful frozen chocolate mousse cake for a formal dinner party. My land use practice, when I lived in Austin, involved a lot of entertaining and we hosted many parties. My oldest son, Eric was about 6 at this time. A few days before Kay had baked a regular, run of the mill chocolate cake, the remnants of which were in a cake safe in the kitchen. The freshly made frozen chocolate mousse cake was sitting in the freezer when Eric innocently asked Kay if he could have a piece of chocolate cake. Thinking he meant the old cake in the cake safe, and impressed that he asked, Kay has said "Sure."
It was only later, when she pulled the frozen mousse cake out to cut it for the party that she saw that Eric had cut a large piece out. She could not be angry. He had asked. Fortunately the cake was so rich she was able to get by with cutting smaller slices...but as I ran this morning and cut my run in to pieces of varying sizes, I could see her face scrutinizing that mousse cake and the mathematical precision she exercised in determining the size she needed to cut to be sure everyone at the dinner party had a piece.
I have some other cake stories, but they will have to be the subject of another blog....It's late and I have another run tomorrow. Life Is Good!
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