My son is a runner. Everytime the front door opens or he has the time to open it himself, he makes a run for it. He is faster than I ever imagined anyone could be. He is like a little lightning bolt hurling itself outside on any occasion.
He began his running career a couple of months ago at which time I thought it was just a phase, but the phase has turned into something else, a sometimes spontaneous sometimes planned occurrence which reminds me of the Science Fiction classic “Logan's Run.”
For those of you who missed the movie and the inevitable 70's television series spin-off, “Logan's Run” featured a much younger Michael York playing Logan who lives in a futurists society in which everyone lives in a bubble. Nearing the age of 30 everyone in the bubble is marked to play the game of Carousel, this is their gateway to a higher reality. As with a lot of Science Fiction movies that higher reality has little to do with staying in this reality we call life.
Anyway, nearing the age of 30 Logan decides to make a run for the outside world to see what is beyond the bubble. He, like my son, plans to run but takes advantage of opportunities which come about spontaneously to make his break. He eventually finds the outside world, a place where the world has rejuvenated itself from the earlier effects of humanity.
My son too wants to get beyond the bubble, which in his world is our house and see what is beyond, what dirt he can dig up or what work he can get into. Work is very big in our house, my son is never happier than when he is working.
Although he is a runner, I cannot blame the movie for his realization that there is a concept of running away or just running, not that I would ever let him see that movie until he 21 at least, if I have anything to do with it. The culprit of these running ideas seems to be in the form of an innocuous little book called “The Runaway Bunny.”
His Auntie Dorothy gave him this book for Easter. It is a beautiful story with even more beautiful illustrations in which a little boy bunny is constantly trying to run away. His mother constantly follows him until he decides that it's not even worth running away because she will find him. Ever since we started reading that book together he has been running.
The first I heard the notion of running away had taken hold in my sons fertile mind was the day his Granddad came over and he whispered in the older ear, “Out of the way Granddad, I'm running away.”
Since that day he will announce to me that he is running away or he will just try and make a break for it. When I ask him where he is running too, he doesn't quite know and sometimes has to sit down and think about it until he decides that the front yard is as good place to run to as any.
His running reminds me that from the earliest time I can remember I thought of running too. I wanted to see faraway places and meet exciting people, some of which I have done, but there's a lot more of the world to explore, and running to it seems to make a lot more sense than running away from it.
