Staying Focused on Using the Chances I Get

Last week I had an experience that touches on the heart of what I’m yearning for these days.  

I was taking my afternoon walk.  After I get done working, I usually walk for about an hour, making a big loop around the chunk of Pasadena I live in, ease to Lake Avenue, down to California, loop around the Trader Joe’s on Arroyo Parkway, then back up Marengo toward where I live.  

I was on the last leg of this route the other day when it happened.  During my walks I’ll listing to some of my audio files and practice one of the languages I’m learning and trying to improve.  This day, I was listening to and repeating a chapter from a Korean audiobook.  The chapter on numbers and counting.  I was reciting the two counting systems the Koreans use, one based on their own numbering system and another based on Chinese, just like the Japanese do.  

I was about halfway up Marengo, counting to ten using the Sino-Korean numbers when I caught sight of someone out of the corner of my eye.  A woman, walking in the bike lane on Marengo.  She had probably stepped off the sidewalk as she came up behind me to give me so social distance.  I’d done the same time numerous times during my walks.  She she had on gray sweatpants with a matching gray zip-up sweat-jacket.  She had on a gray baseball came that also matched.  She had on a white surgical mask.  

I was about to look forward again when I noticed she was looking back at me.  I could see her mouth working under the mask.  She raised her hand to waive at me.  

“Yes?”  I replied in reaction to her gesture, then fumbled with my phone to stop the audiobook’s playback to hear her reply. 

“Yes?”  

“You’re learning Korean?”  

“What?”  I shook my head.  I delayed because I wondered how she knew that then realized immediately that she must have heard me because I was repeating the lesson out loud.  “Uh, yeah…. I’m….”

“I could hear you.  You were counting, right?”  She patted herself on her chest.  “I’m Korean.  I heard you counting.”  

“Uh….”  I was nodding.  I was trying to remember how to say, “Yes.  I’m learning Korean” in Korean.  Having a Korean person to speak to suddenly made all the phrases I’d memorized up to now run and hide in the darkest corners of my mind.  

Before I could figure out what to say, she started counting.  She was picking up where I left off.  Counting in Korean.  

“Yeolhana…. Yeoldul…. Yeolset….”  Eleven…. Twelve…. Thirteen…. 

I joined her, counting along with her.  “Yeolnet…. Yeoltasot…. Yeolyasot….”  Fourteen…. Fifteen…. Sixteen….  We were marching in time at our socially distant separation, calling out the numbers as we walked.  “Yeolilgup…. Yeolyadol….  Yeolahop….  Sumul….”  Seventeen…. Eighteen….  Nineteen…. Twenty!

By the time we reached twenty, she had picked up the pace.  She was ahead of me now, maybe ten feet.  I thought that she was just a faster walker than I was.  She then turned in front of me, gave me a wave as she cut across the sidewalk, then stepped into the walking leading into a group of bungalow apartments I was walking by.  I caught sight of her walking further into the complex as I walked by.  

I put my earphones back in my ears and turned my lesson back on.  I then remembered what it was I wanted to say.  “Ne.  Chonun Hankukeuru baewayo.”  Yes.  I’m learning Korean.  I repeated the phrase until I reached the end of the block to make sure I could remember it next time.

This was a fun experience for me.  A delightful one.  The first of its kind, interacting with someone new, in months.  It’s the type of thing I’d been missing.  The type of encounter that I didn’t experience enough even before the pandemic.  One that had been entirely absent since the pandemic started up until that moment.  

I turned sixty years old last week.  A couple of days before this had happened.  I had not been looking forward to this birthday.  I had come to regard it as something of a deadline.  Don’t like that phrase.  Hmm…. How about an expiration date?  A “Best if Used By” date?  That’s a better one.  Not entirely bad.  Still usable.  Maybe even still enjoyable.  Just no longer at the peak of freshness.  

The pandemic has emphasized this ambivalence toward my continued survival by reducing opportunity to experience this type of interaction.  In recent tweet, I likened myself to being in the sixth inning of a baseball game, a bit behind, needing to put in a pinch-hitter to move runners on the base-path and score some runs.  Sticking with the sports analogy, the pandemic has been like getting injured and being forced to sit out a good part of the season.  Or having to take your best hitter out of the line-up because of an injury.  Something along those lines.  

At sixty years and one week, I’m feeling a little bit better about things.  My standard answer to wishes for a happy birthday has been, “Thanks.  It beats the alternative.”  Which is true, especially since the alternative entails having no more opportunities to find things, do things, meet people, become better, become happier, do ANYTHING whatsoever.  

BUT…. Though may be late in the game, I am still IN the Game.  And I’ll keep working on getting more chances like this, and do more with them when I do.