Every Tuesday and Thursday morning on my am adventure, I see the exact same La Jolla neighborhood dog walkers and avid tennis players. Sort of like a subset community.
If Petey's owner (Petey is a dog) doesn't see Mark and I jogging by at precisely 6:25, he taps his watch and says "there you are." Then we have the young girl who sits and ponders on the rocks of La Jolla. If she perhaps doesn't show up, Mark gets notably worried about her, and he begins to fabricate all sorts of reasons for her absence.
My personal favorite has to be the four British 80 year old women who arrive around 7:10 each morning to play on the court next to us. Despite their age and skill level, they are highly competitive and rather bossy with each other. Nonetheless, they chatter and giggle like young school girls discussing a crush.
Today they were laughing about how 'Clarice' usually gets up at 5:45, but lately, she has been sleeping in until 6:15. I was not ease dropping...the courts are just in close proximity. Mark couldn't find the humor in this convo. I tried explaining to him that some things do not seem funny to us because we do not fully understand the story or the irony.
I don't think I got through to him; however in the midst of my explanation, my thoughts wandered to the question of 'why do old people always get up so early?' Immediately it all sort of made sense to me though. Perhaps they rise early because they know their days are numbered. They are coming to the end. Maybe not rapidly or abruptly, but they sense that time is not on their side. So they awake to squeeze as much living in as possible in the present day.
All this time I thought it was so silly. But it is a phenomenal tactic really.
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