Backgammon or chess would be fine, too.

I absolutely love McKinley Park. It is a beautiful park, with huge trees. But what I love even more is that every part of it is happily used, all the time. There are always kids in the play yard; people are constantly going in and out of the library; the basketball courts always have a game and a crowd. The tennis court lights are on late; the softball diamond has a volleyball game in far right field and me playing catch in far center field. Sometimes there are quinceañeras with a mariachi band, and that makes the whole park sing. There are almost always big families that bring barbecue and guitars; I don’t know whether I am more jealous of them or the old black men who set up a card table and play dominoes all day. I want to play dominoes all day at McKinley Park.

The running path around McKinley Park is just about a mile, because McKinley Park is perfect in every way. I have run it many times. The first time I ran it with Ali, I told her that you can get a ticket if you don’t slalom in and out of the trees planted in a line by the tennis courts. I also told her that there is an alligator in the duck pond, and every winter we all worry about it but someone always takes it home before the first frost and brings it back in the spring and if you watch carefully, sometimes a duckling will get sucked under before your eyes. I also told her that sometimes the guy who runs in wool slacks and loafers will call you a whore as he runs past. She didn’t believe me anymore by that point, but that last one was true.

Ali and I run counter-clockwise, as God intended. Ali said something about not caring which direction she runs in, but as a good friend and kind person, I pretended not to notice her shame. When Margie and I went walking, Margie made me walk clockwise, which puzzled me until I realized that she is lesbian and everything is backwards to her. It was too uncomfortable for me to do two laps the wrong way and Margie is open-minded, so we reversed direction for the second lap.

The McKinley Park running path is said to be a scene, but it has long bothered me that it is not a very well organized scene. I have been working on a plan for years, in which single people all run at the same time of day. Women would run counter-clockwise, as God intended; men would run clockwise, and I am sorry for the discomfort they must endure. But it will be worth it! Because then, instead of maybe running the same direction as the potential love of your life but a half-mile separate, never to see each other, you would be certain to see every potential honey at least twice per mile!

Only the fact that I cannot resolve how to include gay people keeps me from writing to the Bee and the News and Review to propose this plan. I just can’t figure it out. Would gay people run at the same time as the rest of the singles? If gay men run with the guys, they would only encounter women. If they run with the women, they’ll be checking out straight guys. We can’t have all gay men run the same direction; he would never meet the hot guy four minutes in front of him. If there were strong pitcher/catcher tendencies, we could have the types run in opposite directions, but I don’t know how strong those tendencies are and whether men want to declare them so openly. Lesbians pose the same difficulty. Like Brad Pitt, I am unwilling to participate in a system that benefits only straight people. My plan goes unimplemented as I run pointlessly in circles.