Archive

They beat me! I knew the day would inevitably arrive, but it was still difficult to process. I stood there blinking, humiliated. They beat me. All three of them!

On a hot summer day in my 46th year on earth, I took my three school-aged sons jogging around a lake near our home. None of them had ever outstripped me in anything athletically related. Ever. But as we readied for our run, they seemed to collectively sense that this was their day. They stood quietly like vultures circling a dying man. It was pitiful.

I first cued in to their sense of pending conquest when they decided to give me a head start. A head start! Who on earth did they think they were? I could blow them away—always had. Slightly miffed, as I bolted off the starting line ahead of them, I determined to prove that their estimation of my physical eclipse was not only premature but delusional.