There’s none so deaf as those who won’t hear
Twice recently I have had occasion to curse runners - under my breath, admittedly. I fundamentally will always defend runners almost to the hilt, but on these two occasions I bemoaned their gross stupidity. Runners are humans, after all, and most humans are stupid. On each occasion one of these runners ran out into the road that I was turning into in my car, complete with precious cargo of three-year-old daughter strapped into the back seat. They didn’t look, and they didn’t slow down, so both times I had to make an emergency stop and risk getting rammed from behind, which with my daughter in the back was a horrifying thought. (I’m not too keen on the idea of her daddy getting hurt, either, actually).
Now the reason these runners stepped blithely off the kerb into the path of my not-speeding motor was that they were listening to their iPods. How would the law view it if my nightmare scenario ensued, and in stopping suddenly for this cretinous, moronic, irresponsible, iPod-listening runner in order not to cause them harm, I was rammed from behind and my tiny, vulnerable precious little girl was hurt? First of all I suppose the driver of the car behind would be responsible, because you always are when you hit the car in front, no matter how suddenly it stops. But if was shown that I had stopped unreasonably - for example, in the eyes of the law, stopping for a dog is reasonable, but stopping for a cat is not - then could a third party, the stupid runner could be invoked?
I am against the use of earphones for running. A columnist writing on the debate recently put forward arguments for and against, then went on to say, ‘it’s nice to have something to distract me from the drudgery of a…long run.’
Ya know what, Mr Columnist? If running bores you with its ‘drudgery’, just don’t do it. ‘Just don’t do it’ TM, Nike eat your heart out. Ya know what everyone? if you need to be distracted from running, then please find something that you can concentrate on, and stop causing scary near-miss accidents to me and my baby girl. If you can’t run without ‘motivational’ music, what actually is wrong with you? Is exercise so foreign and unnatural that the only way you can contemplate it is with the support of your iPod? Is life so difficult to handle that you need iTunes? Is the prospect of having a thought in your head so devastating that you have to block them out with pop? Do you know what it is like to strike up a conversation with someone? Of course not, you’re both plugged into your music.
What’s next? Will you have to have sex with mood music on your iPod? Get married with motivational tunes getting you up the aisle? Maybe I’m wrong about the jellyfish crowds drifting towards the Tube for their day in the Big Smoke, hands wrapped lifelessly around a large cardboard Starbucks-style cup of coffee and the earphones plugged in. Maybe they’re not listening to music. Maybe their iPods are tellng them, ‘Now the right foot, now the left foot, now the right foot, now the left foot’; or for the more challenged, ‘Now breathe in, now breathe out…in, yes, good, now out.’
Life without an iPod. Try it, you might like it. And you runners, pay attention on the roads. Next time I might pretend I was distracted by my own iPod and run you over.