that's all i'll say about it. many more have said things that are better. more eloquent.
today i woke up early for the second day in a row. i tried to grab hold of the dream that i was having to lull me back to sleep, but that never works for me.
i got up and put on my gear and headed over to lake balboa park, which is a big expanse of land near my house. i figured i'd walk/run the perimeter, which is about five miles. i was not feeling overly energetic, but what the hell. what else was i going to do at 6:25 in the morning?
the sky was actually beautiful. there were clouds to greet me, and the sun was just poking through. it felt good to move. i listened to "this american life" and laughed out loud a few times, and said good morning to my fellow early-risers.
i was behind a woman walking a gorgeous pit bull--the ones they call "blue"--and i lost myself in the daydream of stopping and saying hello to the doggy. she started walking inwards towards the golf course which is in the middle of the park. i followed her, figuring that she knew a path across that i didn't--up for an adventure--not in a big rush to get home.
she walked about fifty feet and then stopped, checked her phone and then turned around. at this point i had walked past her but she wasn't in the mood for a stopgreet, so i kept going. i didn't want her to think i was following her, which i was, but i didn't want to creep her out or anything.
so i kept going.
i walked around the driveway, past some buildings with trucks and golf carts, out the other side, and suddenly i was on the golf course. in the middle of the golf course. i looked around for a way out--a path through--but there wasn't anything, so i headed for the other side of the course where there was a fence, and hopefully a way out.
i walked for a few minutes, my headphones on, when i heard someone screaming at me, "MISS! MISS!" i turned around and saw a man in a golf cart following me. at this point i knew i was in trouble, but being me, i was also defiant. fucking golf course. fucking waste of good land. stupid fucking manicured lawns and men playing a dumbass game.
these are the thoughts that went through my head.
he pulled up close to me and said, with a furrowed brow, "Miss, you cannot be here. This is the golf course. You cannot be here."
"I know. I got trapped."
"What is that?"
"Trapped. Stuck. I'm looking for a way out."
"You have to go back--there is no way out."
at this point I knew that there was no way i was going to hop on his little cart and have him escort me off the premises. i asked him in an incredulous tone if there was a little gap in the fence way over yonder--there had to be--but he told me no. i then told him that i was going to simply jump the fence, as if 40-something women at 7 am jump fences regularly at his golf course.
"That would be bad. You could get bad hurt--or fall. Bad."
i told the fine gentleman that i would be fine, and then i took off running over the greens.
"MISS! MISS!"
i ignored him, and kept running, turning my head now and then to keep an eye on the golfers. what must they think of me, i wondered. who cares, i thought.
i ran sort of haphazdly, trying to gauge ahead where the fence looked the strongest. the course was bordered by a simple chain link fence, except most of it was pretty flimsy. i needed something with a bar on the top, something that looked familiar to me, something i could scale just like i did when i was a kid.
i finally found my spot, dodging the large lawn mower in the process, and grabbed onto the fence. it was about 10 feet high. oh shit. the last time i climbed a chain link fence i was at least fifty pounds lighter and twenty years younger. i began to panic, but i couldn't handle the thought that the groundskeeper was watching me, waiting for me to escape or fail or both.
i tried to stick my feet through the holes in the fence, but my toes don't fit perfectly into them the way they used to. still, i managed to hoist myself up, shaking like hell, my hands hurting immediately. i got to the top and swung my leg over, said "yup, yup, yup" to myself, got my other leg over and let go. i fell to the ground on two feet and immediately started walking again, as if to show the cars and people passing by that my manuever was in my plan all along.
my hands burned all the way back to my car.
as i drove home after finally finishing the five miles, i kept thinking of my groundskeeper friend, and how he was going to be sitting around his dinner table tonight, telling the story of the white woman who walked across the golf course and then jumped over the fence. i hope his family laughed with him, hoped he told the story with glee and embellishment, making me even more combative than i was in real life, maybe--or telling them that as i jumped down from the fence my shirt got caught and ripped.
i hope they all laughed really, really hard.
i would.
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