Some days I wish never happened

Posted on May 3, 2021 by KJ Eastwick

I got wise this morning and turn on my tracker so I knew how far I walked. I thought I left later than yesterday but by the time I got to the train I had 17 minutes to wait – probably should have done some housework instead of leaving so early.

The walk was good – I had the brolly up to act as a sun shade. My phone buzzed – the school activated the phone tree – crap. 1. I didn’t know who I was supposed to let know about the emergency meeting and crap 2. The phone tree gets activated if someone dies. Should I call a friend and ask her for a pick up again. No, if someone died, I will find out about it soon enough, at least this time I’ll get my 3km leg to work in. I also did 15 pushups, 10 squats and 6 tricep dips but my knee wasn’t happy about those tricep dips.

Anyway I got to the train – unable to day dream because I am worried about what has happened at school and to whom. The messaging app had been silent. Again I wondered if I should ask for a lift but if someone died, I was going to need my walk to centre me for the day so I didn’t call.

The fitness app tells me the walk from home to the train station is only 1.97km – shorter that Google Maps. I did it in 25 mins and 44 seconds. Pretty happy with that – I used to be able to do 2.25 kms in an easy 20 mins including hills. This trip was pretty much downhill all the way. I have some fitness to rebuild.

I got to Caboolture train station hoping someone will have taken pity on me and picked me up anyway. Nope – but two vacant taxis beckon. I’m tired from the first leg and my water bottle is dry. It’s hot, however my smart brain wins out (which is unusual) and I walk to prepare myself for the briefing and associated fall out.

I headed straight towards where the briefing was meant to be and note the complete lack of school staff. Uh oh.

It was ages before I remembered my App was still running – fortunately it pauses if you are stationary for too long, even more fortunately, I didn’t call a friend for a pick up – I was right – someone had died – my friend’s 17 year old son, our school Captain. One of the other very nice teachers dropped me back to the train that afternoon. None of us were in the mood to walk. I was in tears when I got to Petrie so instead of walking home, I changed trains and went to the station 300m from my house. I don’t know what anyone else thought and I didn’t care. 17 is too young to die.