Premonition

As summer transitions to fall and then an ultimate winter, the days shorten, and as a result my early morning runs now begin in darkness. It is a bit harder to get out the door, but to be candid, the stress of leading through this pandemic confounds my sleep so that it really isn’t that hard to get up and moving anymore.

Recently, I stretched and took off, aging joints creaking as they now do, and jogged down the one-way exit road of our condominium complex toward the freedom of the unlit neighborhood streets. As I did, in that strange sensation when you are arguably awake and seem to be the only one, I had an oddball thought: What if a vehicle turned down this one-way road my direction in the early morning darkness?

Two seconds later, a small pickup truck turned down the one-way road my direction in the early morning darkness.

Hand to heart, stack of bibles, and all that.

I moved over easily, so it wasn’t the danger of the moment, but for the duration of the three-mile run in the shadowy stillness I kept thinking: Did that just happen? Am I awake? And the craziest thought: Did my mind just create that pickup truck?

I concluded that just might be my luck, that maybe we all get one moment in life when our thoughts create something out of thin air, and I wasted mine on a cheap pickup truck turning down a one-way road in the dark.

My favorite musician, John Fogerty, recorded a live album the year my youngest daughter was born that he titled, Premonition. In the title track he sang:

I got a feelin’ way down inside
I can’t shake it, no matter how I try
You can’t touch it, you just know
The earth is gonna shake and the wind is gonna blow
Well that’s all right
This premonition is killin’ me
But that’s all right
I must be crazy, I must be seein’ things

I don’t know if anyone saw this year coming, but every part of it has left us all a little jumpy about what will come next. All I have to say is that as we run ahead in such darkness, watch out for pickup trucks.