of a Southern Yankee A Case of the Runs
BY DAMIAN DESMOND
One
of my top 10 movies is Forrest Gump. While it is difficult to choose a favorite scene, I love the part of the movie when Forrest decides, out of the blue, to just start running. He spends the next three years, two months, 14 days, and 16 hours of his life running back and forth across the United States. While the beautiful backdrops and the soundtrack create inspirational moments in the film, I’m more drawn to WHY Forrest was running. Having just lost his dear mother and missing the love of his life, Jenny, Forrest did something more people should be doing—he worked on himself, and he did it through running. Running has played a very vital role in my life. As a child, running races in the schoolyard, I never really gave the act much thought. I just took it for granted that I could run. But looking back now on 47 years on this earth, I can see many pictures in the slideshow of my life where running not only helped me physically, but saved me mentally and emotionally, as well. In my 8th-grade year, I decided to start running cross country in Clarke County, Virginia. I remember taking the bus in the afternoon from the middle school to the high school for practices. At the age of 13, I wasn’t really concerned with winning races or bettering my 5K times. For me, it was more about the social aspects. I was getting to hang out with high schoolers, and specifically, high school girls. Not just any high school girls, either. These were good-looking girls who were also in phenomenal shape. I ran cross country through my junior year of high school, and while I didn’t acquire any major awards, I did accumulate many wonderful memories from the experience.
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