PROWLING THE PARK

In line with my new found healthy ambitions, I've taken to haunting the trails at Moulton's H. A. Alexander Park. While by no means huge, the park is nice. It has several baseball diamonds, tennis courts, a rec center complete with handball courts (as accident prone as I am, I don't dare try handball) and a mile and a half long figure 8 walking track that winds around the sports areas & through a large stand of woods, complete with an arched footbridge over a bubbling stream filled with fish. When you walk squirrels bark at you and the birds are everywhere, chirping and tweeting and dropping guano bombs on unsuspecting pedestrians. I'll try to remember to take my camera one day and share some of the local sights.


It's also a good place to people watch. There's one woman who RUNS while pushing a baby carriage. This gal gets up enough speed to cause the infant's hair to blow straight back, resulting in a kid with perpetually wind-blown hair (it'll probably grow up to be a super model or something. The kid, not the hair. Well, maybe both as they seem to be attached).

While I admire anyone who has the physical ability to run at all, much less does it while pushing something else, I get tired of her steadily lapping my slowly plodding fat ass. I'm fighting an inner demon who keeps whispering in my ear: "Trip her! Just stick out your foot and watch her fall. It'll be funny, you'll laugh, and the kid's too young to tell on you". Trouble is, I know I can't outrun the hussy and unless she breaks a leg, in the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, I'd "Have some 'splaining to do".

I've also noticed loads of Senior Citizens walking every day. The Ladies dress in matching outfits and walk in gangs of at least 4, while the Gentlemen wear just about anything from sweats to overalls and usually walk alone. Another difference, the women walk fast! The Grannies have perfectly coiffed hair, step out with their heads high, their chests thrust out (I'm guessing to disguise the effects of age and gravity), their arms swinging, and talking a mile a minute while their heads constantly swivel. These women don't miss a thing. Nothing escapes their gaze or gossip. The men, on the other hand, usually shuffle along slowly, their shoulders hunched and their eyes on the ground in front of them.


In the wild, females usually hang out in packs or herds or whatever while the unattached males are solitary. Are people the same way?

Is the park the new place to pick up a date if one is a Sexy Senior Citizen? Are the women hunting in packs? Do the men keep their heads down and eyes on the ground in fear?

Is there a new mating ritual that I need to know about? Hell, I'm 50 NOW! I might be in the market to meet some old codger one day soon if Sweet Thang don't work out. Someone somewhere needs to tell me these things!

And explain to me why those last few paragraphs sounds like something out of Sex and The City?