We now depart from our regularly scheduled program to talk about The Boy. Yes, there is a boy. My son is 23 years old, recently graduated from college and just starting his first job. I do not know what I have taught him along the way (okay, I taught him one thing…if you drop French fries on the floor of your car you should leave them there because you never know when you will be trapped in your car for three days by a rabid dog or a freak snowstorm). But here are three things that The Boy has taught me:

1).  Perception is everything. Once, when he was about four, he pointed at a varicose vein on my leg and said, “Mommy, is that a rainbow?” (Go ahead, you can say it…awwwww.)

2). Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act.  In his younger days he played soccer, from the time he was six until his sophomore year in high school. When he first started, well, let’s just say he wasn’t the best soccer player on the field. I spent a lot of time running up and down the field yelling, “Pay attention!” and “Just kick the ball already!” and “Get your hands out of your pants!” Sometimes he felt the other kids didn’t like him because he didn’t play as well as they did (to be fair, soccer is a BIG deal where we live and at age six, a lot of the other boys had been playing for two years). Being the stellar mom that I was, I would say, “Yeah, those kids are pretty mean, you should probably just quit.” He would look at me like I was crazy and say, “I’m not QUITTING Mom! Geez!”

Then one day, out of the blue, he just started playing really well. I remember the first game that it happened. I was all geared up for another day of running up and down the sideline when I noticed that he was actually paying attention. And holding his position. And keeping his eye on the ball. And running toward it. And kicking it. In the right direction, even. And playing some pretty awesome defense. It was sort of weird. Afterward, I asked him what the heck happened. He said, “I just started thinking about what a real soccer player would do. How they would stand, and how they would look, and what they would think about. And then I did that.”

3) You really can do anything you set your mind to.  This is my favorite story about The Boy, and the one he is probably the most tired of hearing about. But here it is again, in a written format, because if I verbally tell it I choke up and that’s just embarrassing.

The Boy ran track from seventh grade in middle school through college. The 800 was his love but he also ran the 400 relay. On this particular day in eighth grade, he was running anchor (that means he was the last runner on a four-person relay team). He had already run the 800 and was tired. The three teams they were running against were scary. They looked like grown men; one of them even had a beard. It was a cringeworthy race on the part of our team, and by the time The Boy got the baton we were in last place. It was a bad handoff, and he stumbled at the start. He was fast, and I knew he would catch the third place runner, who was not too far ahead. The second place runner was far, far out in front of him, and the lead…that was just physically impossible. But The Boy took off with everything he had, legs pumping. He passed third place and set his sights on the boy in second. And just before the third curve, with huge effort, he caught him. Well, I thought, second place, that’s pretty damn respectable considering how far back they were. It took a lot to make up that much distance, and it’s more than anybody expected out of him.

The lead runner was approaching the last curve, and nobody would have blamed The Boy if he didn’t have anything left after having run the 800, and giving everything he had to reach second place. But then I saw that he was still pushing, still trying, legs still pumping hard. So, being his mom, I jumped up and started yelling, “Come on! You can do it! Push it!” And everyone around me looked at me like I was crazy. But then the distance between them started closing, and as The Boy rounded the last curve one girl on his team yelled, “Hey! He’s trying to catch him!” And SHE jumped up and started screaming. Then the whole team took to their feet, and THEY started screaming. As the two runners came down the home stretch, The Boy was just feet behind. And now the whole sideline was screaming, and most of them, even those that were there for the other teams, were screaming for The Boy.

If you’ve ever watched a track meet, you’ve seen this happen. A runner will give everything they have to catch the person in front of them, and they will do it. But they will not have anything left to actually pass them, and they fall back almost immediately as they have caught up. I was fully prepared for this to happen. It takes heart to reach down to your reserves and find that they are empty, and push anyway. It takes heart to realize that you have nothing left to give, and give anyway. The Boy has heart. Just feet before the finish line he caught that other runner and they ran neck and neck, until The Boy pulled in front and ducked his head, just as he crossed the finish line.

I hope I have conveyed this well enough for you to imagine the yelling and shouting from the spectators. The Boy, hands on his knees, puking on the track from exertion as his team crowds around him screaming. The father and grandfather with tears in their eyes. And the mother, jumping up and down, screaming, “IN YOUR FACE!” (no, not really…I think). That year he won the coveted Athlete of the Year trophy, an award usually reserved for athletes who played “tougher” sports like football and wrestling. I came downstairs late that night to discover him sitting at the dining room table, staring at the trophy in front of him. He said, “I don’t know why they gave me this. I don’t play football. I don’t wrestle. I don’t play multiple sports. I just run.” I kissed the top of his head and said, “Because you have heart.”

There were other exploits, like the time he won the county meet with a cast on his arm. Many of his teammates referred to him as “the fastest white boy I know.” Once, in high school, a huge menacing-looking boy loomed over him after a track meet only to say, “I’ve been coming out to watch you run since you were in the track club when we were in fifth grade. I’m your biggest fan.” But that race, way back in middle school, that was the stuff of legends.

We spend hours glued to the television watching the Olympics, when really we are hoping to catch just one moment when someone does something so glorious that it lifts the entire human race just a little higher. You do not have to wait two years to catch one of those moments. Attend your local middle school track and field events even if you don’t have a middle schooler. Go to a high school drama production, I promise you’ll be amazed. Help out with the latest fundraiser at the elementary school down the street. The little people around you are doing great things, every day. And you might even learn something.