My dad is not athletic.I’ve never been particularly athletic myself, but like every little boy, I loved to run. I was pretty sure I was the fastest runner ever… I even won medals at the Cub Scout Olympics. Given a choice between walking to the car, and running to it? I chose running every time, and twice on Sundays.
So for years, on those few and far between occasions my dad and I went anywhere alone together, he’d always offer to race me “there.” To the car… to the front door of Radio Shack… on the best weekends, to the lake to throw balled-up bread at the ducks.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. My dad is a gangly fella, and was older than dirt (my GOD! He had to be 40 by then!), and me? I dressed poorly, and wasn’t terribly coordinated, so there were a lot of short arms and legs and long collars flailing about… yet, by some miracle, I usually won.
Sure, sometimes it was close… but generally? Oh yeah, I won.
And we’d sit there, outside of Moran Oldsmobile, and he’d congratulate me, and note with amazement that this time I’d run even faster than that time in the Safeway parking lot. He’d tell me it wasn’t cool to gloat about winning and remind me that I always had more in me, and next time? Next time would be the fastest yet.
It took me years to realize that the greatest lessons my dad ever taught me were learned in the parking lots of greater Fremont. I learned lessons about not just being a good man, but being a better person in the red zones of most every hobby shop in Alameda County… all from a guy who had twice my stride, and no desire to move faster than a saunter.
Someone on Smallville dies tonight.
Sure, there’s a moment we’ve been waiting five years to see, and coal is crushed and titans clash… but we’re left standing over a fresh wound in the ground… and I’m left thinking about a summer afternoon long ago… sitting on a curb next to my dad, while the rest of the world walks by….
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