 "Photo: Photo submitted by Kevin Ludwin")
I believe this is what they call an epiphany.
It's one of those "Ah-hah!" moments when you make one of those great realizations that turns the story around and helps everything make sense. The light shines in.
Except it's all wrong. This epiphany is happening in reverse. I'm staring at an outrageous bill laying on the best table in Foley's Fish Chop and Steak House, then into my wallet, then back to the bill, then back to my wallet. I left my credit card on my desk back at my place.
Ah-hah.
I'm sitting in a very nice restaurant at a very nice table with very nice lighting across from a very nice-looking girl. It only seemed right that I should ask Miriam Hovda, Norwegian cross country runner and Augie uber babe, to a congratulatory meal at Foley's. After all, the ladies' team did take 13th in the country at NCAA Nationals, and if ever there was an excuse for asking a girl on a date, this was it.
Since we'd been there, we'd ordered two Caesar salads, a bottle of Hess cabernet sauvignon, two center cut top sirloins, a side of mashed potatoes, a baked potato that appeared to have been garnished with flecks of gold and an overpriced raspberry burnt custard crepe that was worth every God-awful penny. And I don't have a dollar to my name. Without my card, I have no way to pay for this, no way to recover the horrific shipwreck this date is about to turn into.
Think. Compose. Relax.
I do what any guy who is trying to avoid frantic humiliation on a first date would do: I stall.
And to an extent this is a good move. When your back is to the wall, you start asking questions—not anything particularly philosophical or thought provoking—but questions that keep your head above the surface while you think of an exit strategy. Your questions make you seem genuinely interested in whoever you're talking to because you're so desperate for one more breath of air that any response from the other party is the most profound answer you've ever heard:
Really? I didn't have any idea that _____ was true about _____.
Despite the grisly facts of the situation, I got to learn many things about Miriam and the lush country of Norway as I was scrambling for a solution. She's from Stavern, a small fishing town on the coast (she hates fish). She is also fluent in six languages: Norwegian, English, Swedish, Spanish, Finnish and Danish. She wants to travel and has already set foot in every country in Europe.
Fascinating.
I try to keep my eyes off the bill that has since grown teeth and is now gnawing at my amygdala, which I also learned is the part of the brain that senses fear. Miriam is full of useful information.
I ask her about cross country as my hands flutter through my wallet one more time below the table. Running is her thing. Most people, myself included, think it's insane to run 60 miles a week just to train for a race you'll probably throw up after anyway.
But, according to Miriam, it's worth it.
"Finishing first in a race is like, you know, better than sex," she says in her thick accent, making sure to get her words right.
And to think that somewhere out there, there are scores of skinny-legged runners breaking away from the starting gun—getting off for six consecutive kilometers—toward some orgasmic finish line. I should have tried out for the team a long time ago.
All the while, my eyes have been darting around the room at our waitress, who by now is beginning to look suspiciously at my fifth glass of water after the meal. She looks like she's about to call me out, but just then my thumb trips across something in my wallet: a business credit card.
The card was given to me by my boss (who, for reasons of self-preservation, shall remain nameless) for a recent company (which also shall remain nameless) expense. I had forgotten that I slid it behind my driver's license earlier in the week. If losing your dignity in front of a Scandinavian bombshell isn't an emergency, I don't know what is.
Ah-hah.
Business expense. Tax write-off. Deus ex machina.
The problem, of course, is that once you've crossed the line of using company funds for this kind of thing—when you know you're cooked as soon as the bossman finds out—there are no more shades of gray. Either you are in front of The Line or you have crossed it. And once you're on the other side, the tendency is to keep running as hard as you can.
After escaping from Foley's, Miriam asks to go to Club David's to see the acoustic heartthrob Damon Dotson with some of the other members of the cross country team. Who am I to say no to a woman who's just come off of one of the most important moments of her running career by telling her I have no money for the cover charge? Damon Dotson it is.
The cross country team, like most teams on campus, is tight knit. They travel as a unit and celebrate in a tribal fashion. They jump around on the dance floor, and for once all of their actions seem free: They just finished one of the biggest races of their lives and now instead of running toward a finish line, they are running wild and enjoying the view from the top.
Miriam, the cross country team and I move along with Dotson's songs, and while it might have cost my nameless business a couple of extra bucks (and perhaps cost me my job), my epiphany came after all.
Miriam might be running toward a finish line, but I—all of us—are running too: Moving hard toward some undetermined end, uphill all the way, through the crooked corners of life and nearer to something more exciting and grittier than what we did yesterday.
What Miriam said about this whole running business might be right—you take your licks, you feel the burn, but in the end it's worth it, because sometimes it feels really good when you cross The Line.
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