The Green Ladies

They were out again this morning. Six o’clock and still pitch black, their headlamps and lighted tennis shoes swaying in cadence to their brisk march down the road below my subdivision. The Green Ladies!

The Green Ladies have got their shit together. Aside from being illuminated by enough clip-on beacons to light up the produce aisle at Walmart, they have overcoats and pants in luminous green, the same stuff that has become de rigueur for highway construction crews. Even in the pre-dawn blackness, you can see them coming a mile away. You may well be able to see them from outer space. Ain’t nobody gonna run over a green lady and get away with it.

I have  huge admiration for their perseverance. Rain or shine, wind or snow, they’re out there, just the two of them, burning up calories and getting their cardiovascular fix. They’ve been doing it so long now I feel like I know them, and I wonder how I’d be received if, for instance, I were to stop and say hello. After all, they’ve been waving at my car for years, and I’ve returned every wave, this notwithstanding the fact that they can’t possible see me. 

The Green Ladies give me inspiration just by being out there. Although I’ve never got a good look at their faces, I would guess their age falls somewhere in the pre-geezer zone, about like my own. How many pre-geezers do you know who march up and down the streets of town at 5:30 in the morning? I think about that all the time.

And then I go back to sleep.