“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” –the wise Ferris Bueller
Rarely when I run do I pay attention to the world around me. Most of the time I’m either thinking about my splits or replaying the latest Lady Gaga song over and over again in my head. However, on this one particular evening back in 2007, something caught my eye…
It was my senior year of high school and we were in the middle of track training. A group of our long distance boys were out for a run through the unthreatening suburban streets of West County St. Louis. So here we are, casually jogging down the street at 4:30 mile pace, talking about the struggles of being a teenage boy. All of a sudden, from a distance, I notice this couple making out next to a dumpster behind a music store. So I think to myself, “Wow. That’s gross.” Not quite sure how to properly react in this situation, I could not help but inform my running partners. Apparently they had never been in this situation before either. So we get up closer to this couple and they are really getting into it. As we come within close proximity of the crime scene, I choose to notify this couple they that are not alone, thus stopping what never should have started. They immediately stop kissing each other, understandably embarrassed. Though the female seemed amused, the dude did not receive it well.
Well the story continues. Some girls from our school are running the same route, just about 5 minutes behind us. After they get back from the run, I ask them if they saw the couple behind the music store. It ends up that as they were jogging by the store, they saw this guy proposing to the girl. They actually heard him ask, “Will you marry me?”, thus prompting the girl to say, “Where’s the ring?” So at this point, I’m kinda feelin guilty about interrupting this guy who was about to propose. But the more I thought about it, I realized I was actually doing him (and even more so, her) a favor. I almost saved this girl from getting proposed to in a back parking lot next to a dumpster. Though I have yet to do a follow up study, I think it is safe to assume that their marriage did not last very long… Which brings us to the moral of the story –don’t propose next to a dumpster.
Cameron helps to lead the ambassadors of the track club. He has been running for years and has made his love of running his career. You can see Cameron around the city helping time events and on Monday nights helping with the Beginning runners class.