Adventures in Running

Wednesday is the long day, which is fine. For the last few weeks I have established a pattern of work/study, followed by a late morning long run with my second-shift friend Tim. After that I have lunch with Anthony, which is followed by a visit or two and more study, a trip home for rest and clean-up. Then comes WEM and class. I get home a litte after 8.30, after starting the day between 5 and 5.30.

Today was different since I had a MAMA meeting. As you know, faithful reader, MAMA stands for Mitchell Areas Ministerial Association. And you know, if you are a faithful reader, that I think it should be Hoosier MAMA. I crack me up! Every time! Today's meeting was good. I really like the guys who come to the meetings. We have a lot of fun together. The meeting today was at Mitchell Manor, and, wow, did they put on a nice breakfast for us! Yummy good!

I went straight from the meeting to meet Tim to run 10 miles. That was the plan anyway. At 3.65 miles into the run (had my Garmin on), we were heading east on 39th street, as we often do. As we were about half way up the street, we heard a voice of someone crying out. We both looked, and I thought it was a kid playfully hollering at us. A closer look showed that it was an old lady who had fallen. Her feet were outside, while the door was closed against the rest of her body. She was seated in a very awkward position.

We stopped, and she hollered, "Can you help me?" or something like that. (The story would be better if it had been, "help I've fallen and can't get up.") We both quickly made our way over to her. She seemed OK, but she couldn't get up. We got her up and put her in a chair. We had trouble communicating. We learned that was nearly deaf. By writing questions on a notebook we found out that her son lived about a quarter mile down the street. We got his phone number and tried to call. Busy! We decided to run down to his house.

The poor lady sent us to the wrong house. It took a long time but finally a young woman with a small girl came to the door. We asked if she was related to the fallen lady. "No, but her son lives across the road, right over there," pointing to a house. We thanked her and went across the street. No one home. We ran back to the lady's house and asked about other contacts. She couldn't think of anyone. Tim suggested we asked if she belonged to a church. "Englewood Baptist." We called there, and they knew the lady and said they would send someone down immediately.

As we waited for them to come, the son, who had been at the church and left before we called, just happened to stop by. And at the same time the young woman with the little girl, very concerned, also showed up. The son did not know anything had happened. He came in the back door and didn't know we were inside. We startled him! About that time a guy from church showed up.

Since a crowd developed, we, like the superheros that we are, excused ourselves anonymously, exclaiming, "our work here is done." My 10 miler turned into 8 miler, but, hey, sometimes you have to adjust/adapt.