Risky Business

My walks and runs are filled with secrets; things I pretend are just for me. Take the place in the woods where I go to the bathroom the days I walk so much I can't make it home. When I pass with a fellow walker they have no idea I watered that grass the morning before. My inactive friends don't know how many steps there are to the church on the hill or that they are divided into 12 sets of 9. And no one has more curiously controlled the decaying carcasses of a giant toad with a toadlet on its back than I have.

On my walk through town there's an unfinished condominium and parking lot where they'd left a low curb for many years. If you tried to walk on it you either fell onto the shoulder of the street or onto an empty space waiting to be planted or paved. It wasn't a high, wide wall where you'd be hurt if you fell off, but rather a short, narrow curb. It was my urban balance beam.

I couldn't pass that challenge without jumping up and attempting the length at high speed. I like to think the lady in the brick house across the street spied on me through the holes in her lace curtains. She'd have seen me spin my arms and wobble to find my balance, but seldom fall. Maybe she applauded my improvement the same way I check on her tiny, potted cacti for signs of growth; both secretly part of the other's life.

Unfortunately, the parking lot has been finished. Now one side of the curb still falls to the street, but the other has been planted with a strip of grass and stretch of sidewalk. It's become a curb like any other and now lacks the appeal of a death defying feat on my morning walk.   

In reality, the width and height haven't changed a bit. It should be just as challenging to stay on the mini-concrete ledge with or without the grass. But, it's different. Now I do it more easily at a higher speed, with no wobbling and no satisfaction. The risk of falling to the shoulder of the street still exists, but the safety of the soft, green grass on the other side has removed the thrill. 

We get our personal highs in different doses. I don't have to climb a frozen waterfall to find mine, but apparently a balance beam 7 inches off the ground with only one dangerous side isn't quite enough. My risks might be a nightmare to one and a walk in the park to another, but they're mine and I can take the ones I want.

I don't know the right age for a toad to cross the road by itself, but had they crossed independently, maybe one (or both) would have made it to the other side.