It's happening, just like they said it would. What began some four or five months ago as a barely-perceptible rivulet of curiosity has swelled to a mile-wide Nile of Inquiry. Little J has entered her first Age of Questions. Whimsical, sincere, surreal, mundane - most of her utterances now are interrogative.
At the dining room table: "Wha' happen if I ate Roooooobin?"
On the tire swing: "Wha' happen if I let go of this chaaaaain?"
In the kitchen: "Who's not related to me?"
In the car: "Who's Mrs. Houser?"
On the porch: "You want some of this cooooorn?"
In the living room: "What day is not a school day?"
In the bedroom: ''Dad could you talk about aliens?"
At the table: "Why's Robin have two teeeeeef?"
At the table: "Mom - hahahaha - is Dad a boy or a girl?"
We like to have fun with this. Sometimes at dinner, during an especially relentless spell, Jessica will say, "Jean, let's do impressions. Who am I? Mawm, which kitty is faaaaat? Daddy, what's a tornaaaaado?" Jean loves this. She goes, "Meee!"
Of course, her questions are easy to field, more or less. The bigger ones with longer answers are naturally making their inexorable way down her path of wonderings, but it may be a few more months or years before they take shape. Perhaps some of them will coincide with the correct pronunciation of the prayers we're currently mangling. So, as she says "I pray the Gord my slow to take" I am not surprised that we haven't had a question about def yet. When it comes, I think I'll be ready. There's the short answer to that one, and then there's the one that never ends, which is called Life. Def is what gives Life meaning, makes it precious, provides it with order, makes it worth living, and makes all questions worthy.
So I have a new question too. Jean's never heard it. Jess says Yes. Robin just laughs and throws broccoli.
This important question is: can I run three miles in 18 minutes?
In September, a high school friend up in Colorado and I decided to take on this challenge. This goal appealed to us in its simplicity. We needed neither gym membership nor JumpSoles. No silly broad-jumping across a court beneath the integrity-preserving cover of darkness. Just running a few miles slightly faster each time until we're going six minutes per mile for three miles. That's ninety seconds per lap, for twelve laps. When you break it down that way, it sounds like pie. Ninety second lap? I recall a plodding high school track teammate - dude had a foot on the ground at all times - huffing and chugging his way to 70 seconds back in 1994. Our paper-plate award for him was called Prisoner of Gravity. I drew a picture of him in a cage. So twenty seconds slower than him? P.O.G. crosses and then twenty seconds later I can cross? Cake.
Some answers so far: one of those is easy. Two is easy. Four is pretty hard, but do-able. In November I did six laps at 9:07. There's a 3.1 mile, slightly hilly course in our neighborhood that I did in 20:55 in December. After Holiday Bloat my best time for the neighborhood was 21:25.
(For comparison, top high school boys run this distance in 14 minutes. In theory, we'd be coming in four whole minutes after those guys. That's not too ambitious, is it? Top area high school girls run it in 17 minutes, and sometimes 16 minutes. We're shooting for two minutes after them.)
My friend was having a hard time finding a track up in Denver, where he said the schools gate and lock them. He eventually found one, the existence of which he heard about from a neighbor who had a friend who had a key. Seriously, something like that. We don't have that kind of track security here. Anyway, I can assume he's running at least a 20-minute-something three miles right now. So that's two-plus minutes that we've got to shave. Something like 42 seconds off each mile. 10.5 seconds off each lap. We originally said we'd need till Christmas 2010. Obviously we need more time.
Jean might ask, How much more time do you not need?
