Memorial Park
Lately I’ve been in the mood to drag myself to Memorial Park and walk its three-mile loop. Last week, I invited my cousin Helen to go with me.
“You go to Memorial Park?” she said. “I hear they’re real snooty there. They say there’s a lot of real good-looking people walking around there.”
Well, yeah, there are. And, as far as I’m concerned, their purpose is to give me something to look at while I walk. There are tons of good-looking people, average-looking people, and people in weird outfits. That’s why I love it. It’s like the mall, but it’s free.
Saturday evening I went and found myself keeping pace with a woman twelve steps ahead of me. Right when I noticed that, she turned to see who was keeping pace with her and asked if she could join me. I nodded my head.
It took her two miles to tell me her life story. She had lived in Paris, London, Australia and Iran. She had loved two men. She had seen many wonders of various places, including the bats emerging from their cave in Austin and penguins emerging from the sea near Melbourne. She told her story in a good cadence for walking and I was glad to listen while the miles ticked by.
At the end, she asked me, “So… what do you do?” I told her, “I’m a writer, but I have to work in insurance during the day.”
It used to be that when people asked me what I did, I’d say that I worked in insurance but that I was a writer at night. I used to say that because, when I was first starting out, I’d tell people I was a writer and they’d always ask, “So, what do you write? Books?”
“So, what do you write? Books?” she asked.
“Yes. My first book is coming out in September,” I said. She expressed surprise and excitement. I ended up giving her my URL so she could come to my book-signing party. Then we shook hands and parted at her car.
I hope she does come to my party, and I hope she introduces me to her friends as her walking partner at Memorial Park. That would be fun.
