Mondays are busy days in my neighborhood, busy with joggers in their skimpy shorts, joggers pushing their baby jogging carts, joggers running their dogs. There are altogether too many joggers, but I realize that I say this as a non-jogger, as a person who believes that if you really want to get some place in a hurry you should get into a car or, at the least, hop on a bicycle. Jogging, in my humble opinion, is best reserved for those times when you need to escape a hungry predator. A slow hungry predator. A slow hungry predator who is as out-of-shape as you are.

The joggers, clearly, do not agree with this logic and they are out in force this morning, this Monday morning, and it is all the more tricky to navigate a clear path from my house to the coffee shop. Monday are not good days for this kind of congestion, at least not for me. I require the walk to the coffee shop and I require the double-dose of caffeine, as well as the walk back home, to clear away the cobwebs of the weekend. I do not yet have the clarity of mind to be able to dodge all those sweaty missiles coursing down the sidewalk, and they do not have the presence of mind to dodge me, so Monday mornings are typically filled with collisions. Or near-collisions, to be precise. The joggers have too much to lose if they are slowed by something as avoidable as a collision, so they will invariably veer at the last minute. The trick — one of the tricks — is to maintain a steady course, to avoid veering in the same direction as the jogger. The other trick is to avoid eye contact at all costs. If they realize that you are not aware of them, that you are still comatose from your early rising, they will give you a wide berth.

I know some of the joggers, and we exchange brief pleasantries, compensating as we talk for the Doppler effect. It’s usually the same exchange. “It’s all downhill from here” is a favorite, but only applicable at the peak of any of the many hills in our neighborhood. “Way to work those quads!” is another, one of the joggers’ favorites. They do seem to be a vain bunch, so anything you might offer in the way of a compliment is greedily accepted. Pamela, a young Mom, is running toward me, pushing a baby cart with her fifteen-month-old daughter. She hasn’t packed it in yet, this business of running every morning, but it’s just a matter of time. She sees me first this time, and yells “You guys owe me a dinner!” She is correct; my wife and I owe her a dinner, her and her husband Brian, and we’ve already talked about having them over this weekend.

“We do,” I answer. “Can you handle chicken?”

“Try me some time. Gotta run!” She smiles as she passes, but she is too intent on completing her workout to stop and chat. She doesn’t even break stride at red lights; she jogs in place while she waits for it to change.

I pass Pamela at the mid-way point every day. We are both creatures of habit, and we both keep a strict timetable, strict in the sense that we stick to it until nine or ten, at which point the entire day falls apart. Mine falls apart because there is too much to do, because I have made too many commitments. Hers falls apart because she is the mother to a fifteen-month-old daughter, a creature who, by design, wreaks havoc on predetermined plans.

Half-way. There will be an old man in a few minutes — older than me, anyway — slowly and purposefully making his way up the hill, coffee in hand. If the coffee shop doesn’t slow me down too much I’ll encounter him again, on my way back. There will be two college-age girls, ponytails swaying as they run, who will smile and say hi, and there will be one high-school boy, iPod earbuds firmly in place, who will not notice me at all.