During the fall I try to work out outdoors as much as the weather allows. On days that I work from home, I like to hit the park during my lunch break and do sprints on the soccer field. Since I am a big guy, I don’t run on pavement or any hard surface because I don’t want to destroy my knees, and running on normal grass has it’s own perils (little holes in the ground that I trip on). The soccer fields at this park are well worn and tested, so they are flat and mostly hole free – perfect for running.
Today was a great day (in the late morning) to run outside. I optioned an early lunch and took advantage of a nearly empty park with every soccer field to choose from. I started my sprints and got lost in my own head for about 25 minutes when I noticed a group of 4 dudes standing in the middle of the field. They had a football and they kept looking at me. I knew immediately that these assholes intended on playing football on the field that I was running on – why they couldn’t choose the other three empty fields is beyond me, but they had to take the spot that I was currently using.
I look around to see if I was missing something obvious – like a game scheduled on the field. Nope – it was just the 4 guys. They start passing the ball down the middle of the field, zipping in front of me during my latest sprint down the field. When I hit the opposite end, I just say “Fuck this” loud enough for them to hear me and hop to the next field directly behind the one I was using. I continue my run for another 20 minutes and then loop around the park – giving these assholes the death stare the entire loop. When I reached the original field, they start to pack up and leave.
I know it sounds trivial since there were so many fields to choose from, but I cannot figure out why these assholes picked the field they saw me running on (I am kind of hard to miss) instead of the empty ones. They didn’t say “excuse me” or even “hey asshole – we are using this field now”, they just started playing right in front of me. I sort of regret not confronting them and then the other part of me says “who gives a shit”.
That’s all I got… what would you do?
| What would you do? | |
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Ignore them and go to an open field |
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