"Look Who's Walking"

By Jerry Zezima

My heart surgeon told me to take a hike, so I bought a pedometer. Then he told me that my surgery was canceled and I didn’t have to take a hike. But I already had the pedometer.

So I took a hike.

It was a walk in the park — or, actually, around the neighborhood — compared to the excessive ambulation I would have to do each day while recovering from the surgery I never had.

But since most of my walking is done in the middle of the night (to and from the porcelain convenience), and it’s a good form of exercise that isn’t so stressful that I would need heart surgery, I decided to get outside on a sunny morning and take my pedometer in stride.

According to the diminutive digital device, for which I spent the whopping sum of $9.49, sparing no expense for my health, I took only 47 steps before I was almost run over by someone backing out of a driveway (in a car, not on foot).

It was an inauspicious start to the first leg of my journey. (The second leg followed or I would have fallen down.)

Around the corner, I encountered two people, a young man and a young woman, walking their dogs, each a young husky, on the other side of the street.

“Good morning!” I chirped.

No reaction from the humans.

“Woof!” I barked.

The pooches reacted excitedly.

“Woof!” each one replied, almost yanking their two-legged companions off their feet and dragging them, face-first, across the road.

I wasn’t sure if the dogs wanted to kiss me or bite me, which in either case would have required them to get shots, so I picked up the pace, wondering as the foursome lurched away if the dogs were taking the humans for a walk.

While trudging up a small hill, my bad breath coming in short bursts, I checked my pedometer and saw that I had taken a thousand steps.

I also saw Arnie the mailman.

“I thought you were in the hospital,” he said from his truck.

“I may end up there after this,” I replied, explaining that, contrary to what I had told him a couple of weeks before, I didn’t need heart surgery after all.

“That’s amazing,” Arnie said. “By the way, I put some bills in your mailbox. I hope they don’t affect your heart.”

“Do you see a lot of walkers?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “Everyone is health-conscious these days. But there are a lot of people on bikes, too. One guy, Bob, rides around the neighborhood. He always whizzes past my truck. I can see him coming in my side mirror. I’ll yell, ‘Bob, what are you doing? Be careful!’ One day he ran into the back of a bus.”

“Was he hurt?” I wondered.

“No,” Arnie said. “And he’s still riding. Maybe he should walk.”

“If I get too tired, will you drive me home in your truck?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said with a smile. “You don’t know how many walkers ask me that.”

Up the street, I stopped to chat with Lillian, 86, who was using a walker to get the mail Arnie had left for her. I told her about my canceled cardiac surgery.

“You’re lucky,” she said. “I have a heart problem. In fact, I have to go to the doctor this afternoon. It’s my social life now.”

“Do you walk?” I asked.

“Only around the driveway,” Lillian said. “A pedometer wouldn’t do me much good.”

But it worked pretty well for me. After walking past a house where the sprinklers had just come on, I arrived home, damp and winded, with my heart beating fast in anticipation of seeing how many steps I had taken.

The count on my pedometer: 3,552. It amounted to about a mile and a half.

“How do you feel?” my wife asked.

“Not  bad,” I said. “But if I can’t make it back tomorrow, check the mailbox. Arnie’s going to make me a special delivery.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima