“You would?” another replied. “I doubt it. I think you kind of like hating her.”

“I’d do it. Make me.” The woman is not a runner. I heard her describe her own body type one day as “dough woman.”

“I dare you,” said the online college professor with pink streaks in her hair.

“I dare you!” she told the professor. “You’re the runner. Plus, you can’t stand your daughter-in-law.”

“That’s because she hates my cooking. Says it’s not organic enough. She has all these allergies, too. Can’t eat meat. Can’t eat dairy. How do you say it? Glue-ton? Glug-ting? Gluten! That’s it! Can’t eat that stuff, either. I swear she can eat only carrots.”

“I would run naked if no one saw.” I blinked. The woman is seventy-three.

“If Eunice does it, I’ll do it. I can’t run fast, but I’d participate. I have a lot of anger in me because my father was a bourbon slamming, wife-beating, kid-slapping son of a gun. You’d think my anger would be gone with him being dead and burning in hell for five years, but I still got it.”

“I’m angry that my kids don’t come to see me,” huffed LouLou Meiers. LouLou was the wrong name for this woman. “LouLou” is the name of a fun and sweet woman who likes to party. This one served in the military for twenty-five years and always talks like a drill sergeant.

“Maybe if you didn’t scare them so much and always tell them to address you as ma’am instead of mom, and if you didn’t wake them up at the crack of dawn for running and exercising when they’re here visiting, and if you didn’t insist that they fold their sheets like they’re in boot camp, they’d come by more.”

“Humph,” LouLou said. “Up early, make your bed right, exercise your body so you can exercise your mind. Go to bed early. That’s how I raised ’em, that’s how it’s going to be when they return for visits.”

“It’s not working, LouLou.”

LouLou appeared baffled. Why would anyone not want the discipline of a military life?

“Let’s do it,” a mother of five said. “I’m mad because my teenagers are awful. They are wild and sneak out of the house and drink alcohol and are probably having sex. It’s a small island, you would think I could find them screwing around, but no. So. Tonight. At the lake. No one’s around.”

“I’ll do it. My menopause is a raging red bull inside of me. Have I told you about the vaginal dryness I’m experiencing? I need gel or oil or something for it. My aunt told me to put basil leaves on it. My cousin told me the skin of a banana would help. It didn’t.”

There was some interest in talking about vaginal dryness, but soon they were back to the naked run.

By God and by golly, they did it. I heard about it later. Nighttime. Naked. Running. Jogging. Walking. Around the lake. They invited me and I said I had a lot of work to do at the bookstore, woe is me. Plus, I’m not going to do something I hate to do, like running. The only time I want to run is if a bear is chasing me.