Standing in The Runner's Sweaty Sneakers...

There is a woman who runs around my apartment neighborhood.  She is a living legend among my friends.  Completely unbeknownst to her, she has been the topic of conversation on many a Thursday-night-dinner.  She barely picks up her feet when she runs, and her head bobs up and down, mouth agape, with each step.  I tried it once, and my brain sloshed inside my skull and it hurt.  I can't imagine how she does it every day.  This would be weird enough, but she runs every day, and for hours.  Sweat-soaked, not "glistening," she makes her rounds throughout the neighborhood.

I just don't understand her, on so many levels.  First, I have a hard time understanding runners in general, as I find the incessant pounding of my limbs against the pavement to be torturous.  My knees ache, my chest hurts, and there is no goal.  I prefer to run only when being chased.  And hopefully that doesn't happen very often.  I also don't understand why she runs every day.  She doesn't have that lithe, bony look of someone who runs every day, so maybe that's her goal.  But in the months I've seen her run, she isn't morphing into a runner's body... so that's probably not why she does it.  We've pondered this.  Maybe she has control issues, we thought.  Or some OCD issues, thought Bestie (who, incidentally does not like the term "Bestie," so we need a new name for her.  Any suggestions?  BFFL?  Too adolescent and texty.  Give me ideas!).

"She was running when we left at 4:15, and it's now past 5:15.  She's insane."
"I know-- how does she stay hydrated?"
"She doesn't have a water bottle..."
"My sister says she sees her go into her house and then come back out to keep running.  Maybe she gets water.  I think it's an OCD thing."
This is just one example of the many conversations we have surrounding this woman.

We have mixed emotions about her.  For some reason, we had feelings of real animosity towards her, like, how dare she run so often?  And how dare she do that weird thing with her head  I'd like to just teach her a thing or two-- stabilize that head!  It was a little creepy how strongly we disliked her, or the idea of her.  And then we realized that one of our friends lived in her building!  Now we could stalk her every run and analyze her to bits!  We then started to feel sorry for her.  That's so sad that she feels she has to run for hours every day.  Maybe she has a problem.

Oh believe me, I get how creepy this is, the fact that we talk about The Runner over our chimichangas.  Every time I walk over to Bestie's (sorry Bestie, I'm working on a new name...), I pass her on the sidewalk.  I feel super awkward, as if she knows that we discuss her.  It wasn't until very recently that I realized that I had become my own version of a Scout Finch, wondering unabashedly and insatiably about her mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley.  For those of you unfamiliar with To Kill a Mockingbird (only one of the very best books of all time), Boo is the mysterious neighbor about which horrible stories are told and heinous activities assumed; none of these things are based on fact, and the children are told that until they stand in someone else's shoes, they have no right to judge. 

Touche, for I have not stood in The Runner's sweaty sneakers.  I haven't run the many miles she's run for whatever reason.  I don't know what motivates her or what she thinks about when she runs.  I don't know what tunes play on her iPod, and I don't know why she runs the way she runs.  But because I don't know is exactly why I shouldn't judge.  So, The Runner, my very own Boo Radley, I'm sorry I've judged you and I'll try not to be creepy about you during Thursday dinner parties anymore.  Also because I don't want to be Weird Redhead that my neighbors talk about.  But then my neighbors are an entirely different story...