The cross-country runner

Courtesy of Longreads, a piece by Michael Oppenheimer, "The Race That is Not About Winning", celebrating onscreen portrayals of the high school cross-country runner. That's just an excuse, though, to reflect on a certain kind of oddball that isn't accorded much attention by Hollywood, or anyone else for that matter: "the American teen male anti-athlete."

He is not a genius, he is not pathologically shy, and he is not widely loathed. Rather, he is a little shy, a little marginal, and a good bit quirkier than his classmates. He does not necessarily read constantly, but when he reads—or listens to music, or skips school to go to a matinee by himself—it is with an outsider’s wistfulness, with a hopeful eye on the world beyond high school.

I wasn't a cross-country runner but it was the only athletic activity I even fleetingly considered pursuing. Now I understand why.

This piece will hit very close to home for a few of you -- or rather, if I may be so bold, us.