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Last week my friend, E, who I find to be pretty awesome, went out for a run. She hadn’t run in a while. She was pumped. She had found renewed energy and focus. She was happy to be out on the streets, putting one foot in front of the other. She was just finding her groove, battling a hill, when some jackass yelled out and called her a name.
It doesn’t matter what the name was – suffice it to say, it was hurtful and demoralizing. By the end of her run, my friend was alternating between tears and anger.
When I read what had happened I was furious.
On the micro-level, I was furious that someone would belittle my friend, a woman who was working hard to better herself.
But there was a whole other macro-level of furious that boiled up in me. As the parent of a girl with autism, I know that I have become overly-sensitive to the concept of name calling. Words like “retard” make me want to grab the speaker by the shoulders, shake them and then pop ’em in the kisser with a left-cross (and my left-cross is pretty good). I usually take a deep breath, take stock of the situation. If it is the only time I have ever heard this person say it, then I usually let it go, but if it becomes a regular thing, that’s when I kindly ask them to stop. The wife actually wrote a very good post on the topic. You can read it —>HERE<—.
But I digress.
I know in this day and age, it ain’t cool to be PC, and quite honestly, I tend to think that as a society, we tend to over-think things a lot. There are a lot of PC concepts that I just can’t get behind (everybody wins all the time? does that teach anybody anything?). But the truth is, words hurt; words scar. And if you are particularly insecure about certain things, certain words can cut even deeper and leave scars that take a long time to go away.
So when I heard this story, my heart went out to E.
She wrote that it might be a while before she gets out there again with running shoes on. My hope is that she can find her inner duck and let the name calling roll off her back. When she runs, she inspires more people than she knows. She may not be fast – in fact, I think she would be the first person to admit that – but she runs, and through her running and her humor she brings smiles to faces and gets people thinking about health and fitness.
I hope she will Tai Chi the crap out of the hurtful words, turning its energy against itself, turning it into something positive. I hope she gets angry instead of demoralized. I hope she decides to take the power away from the jackass and make it her own. I hope she remembers that running is cleansing and can wash away the dirt people throw at us.
I hope to see you out there running soon E.
You can check out Miss E at – http://fromfat2fab2009.blogspot.com/
Run Luau Run 
Luau…what a wonderful, supportive post! It also made me check out her blog…having similar struggles…she seems awesome. It’s so sad that complete jackasses can have such unreasonable power over people whose character far surpassses theirs.
I don’t get people. Ugh. gail
We were brought up being told “if you dont have anything nice to say then dont say anything at all”.That in my mind is not PC but just good manners,something we dont seem to hold in high regard anymore.
I would have to agree. I see it in adults and in the children they are bringing up.
This post brought tears to my eyes. I cannot believe that a person had the audacity to yell anything negative at your friend. I don’t know E but she sounds like a strong person that will get back on that horse or rather on that road and go running again. It is obvious she loves running too much to let that person win.
E runs therefore she is a runner who cares what anyone else thinks.
I hope that I get to meet E someday to tell her how proud I am of her for getting out there.
Thank you for sharing this story. I commented on her blog too.
I think those nasty name callers need to work off some of their hostility and inferiority issues with a good, long, run.
This makes me so ANGRY! Grrr… I simply HATE assholes like this guy! On the other hand, I checked-out E’s blog and I’m following her now (don’t know how I missed her before), but just looking at her blog and the responses of encouragement and support she received just makes me SO proud of the running community. Situations like this make me an even bigger fan and evangelist of sites like dailymile and twitter, and further cements my belief that a training blog is SO important! We’ve tapped into an awesome, awesome thing here…
I had a similar situation a few years back. I am barely 5 feet tall and any weight on me goes to my butt and of course I was running one day when someone I passed (seriously I am passing her when she says this) says something about my big ass. I was so hurt I really did want to cry and while I knew I was in good shape and looked pretty good, I also started thinking the fat thoughts. It took weeks to pull myself out of the funk. I know this wouldn’t have helped but I wish I had thrown her skinny butt into that canal that day. Because while I still remember the statement I am sure she doesn’t and the canal stink would be a lasting reminder.
Throwing her in the canal would have been awesome!