Reaching....

Hello Running Mommies: Great day to be alive. It is sunny and Monday. I had an interesting weekend. I belong to a homeschooling group (I always feel like a fraud since I only homeschool one and two are in school), but that is another story. Well the group put out a request for judges for a debate/speech contest. I smiled. I grinned. I thought finally something I can actually do!! I'm not crafty, I do not sew, knit, glue anything, I barely sew buttons on and most of these women are amazing at it. I flunk art and music on a regular basis. I casually fill out the judge form and the regional folks sign me up and seem thrilled that I'm a lawyer with some speech/debate background. I use the opportunity to take my 9 year old son with me and he has not seen me in a suit very often and never seen me as a lawyer. We show up and get taken to a neat hospitality room where he pigs out and I get coffee. I notice a middle-aged woman talking to some of the other judges and she's asking for background. They all eagerly chirp away and she happily takes notes. She gets to me last. I am not sure exactly what to tell her. She sees by my nametag that I'm a lawyer, but she wants to know more. I tell her I grew up in Boston, went to law school there. I blah blah blah on awards, trial advocacy, my time as a Law Professor, my time as a federal Prosecutor.... but she keeps looking and wanting more. I'm starting to ramble a bit and wonder if she needs to know that in 1989 the Dean of my law school nominated me as the Most Outstanding Female Law graduate. I'm feeling a bit sweaty here thinking what more?? I homeschool, I clean the house, I do all sorts of mundane things now. I'm just not that intersting, but heck I run. Sooo.. I dropped it on her. I said, "I run Marathons." Ok, so I've only run two marathons, but that is technically plural. She stopped looking at me like I was a fraud for being there. She was impressed. Running and debates?? No correlation. No connection. But, she was clearly not a physical person and running finally got me past her. Then after introducing the other judges to a packed auditorium-- she forgot her notes on me and just gave my name, which she mispronounced. It was pretty funny.