The Thin Line - The Short Story Of A Runner
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me.”
“Eh, you’ll catch me one day.” Dan smiled, playfully punched him in the shoulder before jogging off for a cool down. He stared as Dan trotted away, wistfully shaking his head in admiration. After catching his breath, he dragged himself back into the house.
He showered, changed and grabbed a mountain of textbooks for class. He brushed his teeth for exactly two minutes – the time recommended by the American Dental Association. He also brushed his hair, the length of which was beginning to worry him. Twenty-five strokes exactly. Anymore and he knew it wouldn’t look as good. Hygiene is important to him. It’s the sign of well-maintained life.
He was experiencing a post-exercise euphoria and was feeling incredibly thankful. He was so lucky that he knew Dan. Dan liked everything that he liked. They shared interests and they made each other better at them. It’s the perfect symbiosis, he thought. Just as long as he was able to keep up with Dan…
He walked to the back of the house and a voice from the kitchen startled him as he headed out the door at 9:00 am for his 9:20 am class. One of his housemates was eating breakfast.
“Hey man, how was your run this morning?” He couldn’t help but cringe as he noticed his housemate spilling milk over the counter while spooning a horridly saccharine cereal concoction into his mouth.
“Good, good. I had Dan pushing me again…kid’s a great training partner.”
“Yea, he sounds like a helluva athlete. You going to class already?” His housemate was still half asleep and was slightly slurring his words. The kid was falling behind in classes and would probably have to stay on for another semester. He didn’t understand how someone could be so unmotivated. A tingle of resentment was drowned out by pity.
“Yea, I like to get there a little early because I always try to grab a seat in the front row. Preferably the same one.”
His housemate laughed, “All right man, well don’t work yourself too hard. I’ll see you later.”
“Peace.”
He walked to class and calculated his splits and mile pace for his run that morning. It was fast. That was good. He would do well at Conferences. Next, he mapped out his itinerary for the day. He suddenly remembered that he had a meeting for the newspaper at 4:10 pm. He frantically grabbed his planner from his book bag and jotted this down. An uneasy sense of forgetfulness jolted through his spine. It made him feel dreadful and anxious. What else had he forgotten? He was already feeling worried about the lab that he needed to complete for tonight before his date at 8pm. There just aren’t enough hours.
He arrived at his lecture and quickly reviewed his to-do list. Nothing else seemed to be out of order. He breathed a sigh of relief and prepared his notes for class. He took his seat, beating the next student to the lecture hall by a full five minutes.
All throughout class he frantically wrote down notes. He jotted down diagrams and referenced back to the text multiple times. Most other students didn’t even bother bringing the text. The professor was droning on about a formula that they were all supposed to know. He asked a question to the half-comatose hall. Crickets. The query caused him to flip through his notes to try to find some hint of what the answer might be. Finally, the professor gave up and told them. ‘Shit!’ He thought to himself. He knew that answer, but he hadn’t been sure enough to raise his hand. Another question was posed to the class. This time he knew what it was. He had done extra work last night and had already worked on the specific problem that was now being referenced. And he had checked his answer with the book last night. Cautiously, he raised his hand.
The professor’s eyes lit up with the sight of an engaged student, “Yes!?”
“X equals negative twenty three point four seven?”
“Yes! Very good! Now, let’s see how we got that…”
He sighed a huge breath of relief.
Class let out two minutes late. He knew this because he always allotted himself 10 minutes to get to the campus café for coffee. If he arrived late then a line of at least four people would be in front of him. This delay would lead to an additional 2 minutes being tacked on to the 1/8 of a mile walk to his next class. And that time would compound itself further as the day progressed. This was simply unacceptable to him and his very tight schedule.
The day passed and he made up for his lost time by jogging to the rest of his classes. He was angry with himself for being distracted during his newspaper meeting at 4 pm. He couldn’t stop thinking about Dan. How was he so fast? His mind raced back to that morning and all he saw were Dan’s strong, thin legs flashing in front of him. ‘What an athlete…’ he thought to himself.
Back at the house that evening he worked diligently on his lab. It needed to be done that night. Tomorrow was reserved for a test review. No minute could by go unaccounted for.
His phone intermittently buzzed to alert him of a call. Now he was slightly annoyed. Who would be bothering him? He had a lab to finish for christsakes.
“Hey, where are you?”
“Uh.” It was his girlfriend. He had forgotten about dinner and was now late.
“I’m waiting outside my dorm…waiting for you and feeling like an idiot. We’re going to lose our reservation if you don’t get over here soon.”
“Uh.”
“Just get over here, okay?”
“Okay.”
Dan had once told him that there are three major aspects to college life; academics, athletics and social stuff, and most people can only really excel at two of those for a sustainable period of time. He groaned to himself. He felt guilty, tired, and overloaded. How is it that Dan always seemed to be batting three for three when he felt like he could barely manage one?
They got to the restaurant just in time. His girlfriend wasn’t pleased.
“You know, you’re unbelievable sometimes. I was waiting for like 20 minutes. I mean, I even called you this morning to remind you. I went out of my way to call you this morning so that I wouldn’t interrupt your class schedule ‘cause I know how serious you are about it. You know, I didn’t have class until 9:20 but I still got up early to call you to confirm. Honestly, I feel like I’m the only one working at this and that I’m like not a priority at all for you.”
“I’m sorry, you’re right. I need to be better for you.” He looked down sheepishly.
“I just don’t understand it. You’re so absentminded of my needs, yet you’re so on top of everything else. I won’t buy it. I won’t buy that you just can’t remember. I see how well you manage your time otherwise. You’re just telling me right now that I’m not a priority for you.”
“I’m sorry”. It’s all he could say. He did feel genuinely sorry but he also felt pressured and a little peeved. He wasn’t sorry that he concentrated more on his studies but he was sorry that things were the way that they were. He was sorry that he wasn’t more like Dan. He knew he had to focus on running and his schoolwork. He couldn’t afford to sacrifice either of those for the third ‘life dimension’, even if it wasn’t fair to her. Inadequacy haunted him. She was a sweet girl and he knew that he didn’t deserve her because he didn’t treat her well enough but at the same time he felt a little angry at her for not understanding just how seriously he took the first two life dimensions.
She sighed heavily, “It’s okay. Let’s just try to have a nice dinner, okay?”
“Okay.”
They ordered their food and made small talk. The foul mood gradually dissipated. They discussed her courses and his courses and his running. Both of them cheered up once their food arrived and they started eating. He was especially hungry. He hadn’t eaten lunch because he had been working in the library and proceeded to lose track of time. When he did remember to eat his food choices were quite spartan. He looked wistfully at her spaghetti and meatballs as he washed down his first bite of eggplant parmesan – served without breadcrumbs or a side pasta – with a sip of ice water. She had a bubbly soda t
hat he kept eyeing hungrily. He couldn’t afford to put on extra weight.
“You know, you’re working yourself too hard”, she told him and she slurped up a loose strain of spaghetti.
“I know.”
“Why are you doing this to yourself? You’re going to go crazy if you try to keep going at the pace you’re at now.”
“I have to do the best I can at whatever I’m doing.”
“You sound like a Nike slogan. C’mon, seriously, why are you so anal all the time? It’s good to work hard but the way you do it is sometimes scary. It’s like you’re a robot.”
He paused and glanced around the restaurant and counted the number of chairs and tables, “I don’t know. I’ve always been a hard worker. I need to do well in school because I want to have a good job when I graduate.”
She took his hand, “Hey, listen to me. You’re not your Dad, okay? You’re going to be very successful. I mean, you’re a chemical engineering major. That’s phenomenal. You’re going to do very well for yourself. I know your childhood was tough with your Dad always being away at sales events trying to pawn off his latest invention and stuff but you turned out just fine, and you’re not going to have to go through that again. Believe me, you could do half of what you’re doing now and still do much better than that.”
He looked at his half-eaten meal, “I guess I just don’t want anything