Cedar Rapids, IA

Wilson Middle School

Run Time: 61:48 + 2-minute kick

The hotel and the neighborhood were not ideal. A lot of hotels are near a freeway, which does not help, but sometimes there is an additional level of dubiosity. A little more trash than necessary, a rock holding the hotel door open, weeds growing through cracks in the sidewalk, people with bad teeth — you get the picture. So I was happy to find a school about a mile away with a track, and far enough away from the freeway that you couldn’t really hear the traffic. The homes around the school looked homey, and a few local denizens joined me at the track to walk or, in the case of one heavy-set old guy with long hair and jeans, to run sprints. So it felt safe.

This was an old-school track. Which was appropriate, since it was at… an old school. It was a cinder track. Well, maybe not actual cinder. Faux cinder. It was fine red gravel. Which makes for fine running, frankly. Who needs old recycled tires? When you watch “Chariots of Fire,” the Olympic runners are digging their own footholds with hand tools in the packed cinder. They are not setting up the tilted shoe-size measurement devices modern-day runners use. The footing on this track was as close to perfect as one needs while on a sales trip across Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska.

The night before the trip I watched “Get Out.” It was scary, it was suspenseful, it was well-crafted, and it was thought-provoking. As I figured out what was going on, I felt nearly as immobilized as the main character felt when he was in “the sunken place.” What was so frightening about the movie was the psychological aspect of the danger that threatened him. I actually felt the urge to enter the screen and pull him out. I probably told him to Get Out as I sat on our couch alone watching the movie. And, of course, I felt more real fear after the movie than I felt before. Not that what happened in the movie could happen — which it probably could — but that some form of it has been happening, is happening, and will happen more to people who are robbed of the power of self-defense.

What people with power will do to retain power, to rob others to attain wealth, and to gain an advantage over others who are friendly and generous without suspicion is an abomination. We are too nice to those people with power. I am reading “Dune” right now, and on the planet the characters inhabit, violence and killing is an everyday occurrence, and it leads to a somewhat ordered civility. I wonder if powerful people who routinely game the system might not think twice if every third person they fleeced might not just take them down.

Why do we let CEOs get paid 5000 times what their lowest-paid employees get paid (notice I said “get paid,” not “earn”)? Why do we let men who rape women get lawyered out of accountability? Why do we let racists block minorities and immigrants from advancing? Why don’t we use AI to figure out the quickest and fairest road to reparations, instead of how to game the stock market?

It’s heartbreaking. Confusing and heartbreaking.