JOGGING WITH THE PIED PIPER

Apparently, I am the Pied Piper.

I like to walk and sometimes jog.  Between my messed up feet and my poor stamina, I’m curious to see if I’ve made any progress whatsoever with my routine, so today I skip the circuitous route and go straight for the track.  It’s still relatively early and it’s a weekday.  How many people are really going to be there?

When I arrive, the parking lot (small as it is) is already full.  There appears to be some kind of class going on, some kind of training blocking an entire section of the track, and there are little kids running everywhere.  This does not bode well with me.  Share the track.  It’s public property.

I walk a little bit then start jogging, barreling right through the boot camp trainers, and I continue to do so as I jog around.  This is the amazing part.  Last summer I could barely make it halfway around the track.  Today I make it all the way around the track not just once but twice before needing a walk break.  Two times around.

On my second time around, though, a little kid is running to keep up with me.  I have picked up a straggler.  I am jogging, and his teeny little legs are pumping full force, running at a full out gait to catch up to me. 

Um.  Okay.

I reach the parents again, and Jack’s (for I have learned his name and his age, which is four) mother tells him not to bother me.  “It’s all right,” I reply, “he’s pacing me.”  Actually, he’s passing me.  I continue on, making it around the track with my walk-then-jog routine many more times.  Now that I’ve picked up Jack, I lost count of my progress.

Suddenly a girl on a bicycle joins in, telling us to keep running because Loki is after us.  Loki?  How the hell does this six year old (for Kiley introduces herself) know about Loki?  I peek behind us and see an older gentleman who is wearing a white shirt and blue shorts.  He alternates between walking and jogging, much like I do, and is half a lap behind us.  Hmmmm.  I’m the one dressed totally in black.  I’m the one who’d be typecast as the villain.

No sooner do I pick up Kiley when Jack’s three-year-old sister joins in.  Her stubby legs cannot keep pace so I slow us all down to a walk.  I look like the damn Pied Piper with this trail of children growing behind me.  I guess we should’ve kept running because walking is not the little girl’s forte, and she wipes out hard on the tar track.  I try to console her, but I am a stranger, after all.  She won’t take my hand to help, either, so Jack must try and drag her all the way to the other side of the track to where Mom is taking her training class.

I think, Good, mayhem means the kids will stop following me.

Wrong.  Kiley urges me to join her mother’s class, and also recommends that I show up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning so we can hang out together.  This might be fun for her and Jack (probably not for Jack’s sister), but I’m not so sure about this whole kid magnet thing.  I explain that on Friday I’m going hiking in New Hampshire, but maybe I’ll see her next week. 

After a short while she and Jack go to play at the nearby playground, forgetting all about me.  I make my final turn around the track, marking thirty-five minutes and rejoicing that today I have jogged more than I walked.  Much more.  I glance around and see that I, the Track Stranger, The Pied Piper of Shawsheen, am a distant memory if any memory at all.  I walk to my car, which I parked around the corner from the full lot, as alone as I had been when I arrived.

Bye-bye, Hamelin, I think as I drive away.  Maybe next Monday?  We shall see.