“Henry, what are you doing?”
Henry looked up, surprised by the question and its intensity. Henry had just unwrapped a piece of gum (a VERY special treat) and thrown the silvery wrapper on the ground. Both his mother and his father reacted the way parents do when they are trying to impart a life lesson. “We do not throw garbage or paper on the ground! That’s littering, we don’t litter, and littering is bad.”
Now it’s easy to understand why Henry forgot the rules. My family has been somewhat consumed with Falmouth Road Race plans, and we were finally on the side lines, ready to cheer on the 10,000 ROAD RACE runners. While it’s always a happening, this year my sister Andrea was running her first race, which cranked up the family excitement level to visible vibrations. Car pooling and parking, transporting food and drink, gathering sunblock and protective covering, occupying young boys and safely situating relatives – attending the race with a crowd requires a lot of planning.
The first athlete in a wheel chair whizzes by, and you are overcome with the enormity of this event. The dazzling ocean-side setting takes a back seat to both world class athletes (my god, they are so beautiful to watch) and regular runners. From all over the world, people of all ages and abilities come to run from Woods Hole to Falmouth. The reasons for running are as varied as the people who participate. A few run for the prestige and the money, some run for charity and public awareness, others run for exercise and to beat their own personal times, while many run for the sheer joy of running.
I challenge anyone to watch the Falmouth Road Race and remain detached and unmoved. From the blind and the burned, Spider Man and Wonder Woman, the wheel chair bound and the one legged runner, the experienced and the newbies, the parents and their children – watching the race can shift your perspective, and in a very positive way.
As my sister passed in front of us, we ramped up our cheering to a frenzy missed only by the blimp driver (question: does one drive a blimp?). We went crazy. I guess we felt that if she could expend the energy to run the 7 miles, we had to equal her effort with our enthusiasm.
She finished with a personal best and we repacked the wagon, heading back to our secret local parking space.
Perhaps we were still a little distracted, and perhaps we weren’t paying a lot of attention to Henry’s question, but he finally screamed, “MUMMY!” and we all stopped. “Mummy, look at all the litter on the ground!”
I looked, not with my eyes, the eyes that know there are volunteers that have hours upon hours of cleanup to do; the eyes that knows that runners have to hydrate themselves and can’t stop to deposit their litter into a trash can, but the eyes of a little boy, being pulled in a wagon who was much closer to the ground trash then I was.
As I listened to his mother explain all about the runners and the volunteers, I thought about how many people it takes to make something like the Falmouth road race run so smoothly. I also thought about how many questions mothers and fathers fields on a daily basis. Now I know it’s not even close to 10,000, but it must seem like that many. To raise a responsible and loving boy-citizen, is just as hard (maybe harder), than running a road race.
Henry was distressed about what he saw on the ground, but it had nothing to do with the litter. What really concerned him was the bottles of sugary drinks that were tossed with SUGARY LIQUID LEFT in them. That anyone would waste sugar was beyond his comprehension, and he wanted an explanation!
In Henry’s world, there is no greater sin than wasting (throwing away!) any sugar product, and you know, on some days, I have to agree with him.
