I heart Adrian Fenty

I went down to Washington, DC this weekend to staff the National Marathon. I saved a lot of lives passed out a lot of motrin, but despite the lack of opportunities to swoop in and pound on someone’s chest in the middle of the race course, it was still quite a bit of fun, if you take away the butt crack of dawn arrival time, the frigid temperatures and the rain. Really, I had a great time. Perhaps the highlight was seeing DC Mayor Adrian Fenty run past. Actually, he ran past me three times but it wasn’t until the third time that he passed by that things became clear. I was stationed at a First Aid tent that the runners ran by a variety of times. I noticed one of those dark sedans with the flashing lights and blacked out windows creep by with the first crop of runners but I was caddy-corner to the White House and figured it had something to do with White House business (somehow my frozen, sleep deprived brain failed to process the fact that White House vehicles are probably able to avoid marathon traffic versus having to drive through it.) The car then passed by going the opposite way as the athletes headed the other direction as well. “Hmm,” I mused to myself, “Official business must be all tided up.” (One of my problems is that once I have figured out an anomaly in daily life, I then stop musing over the problem, versus seeking out alternative explanations, no matter how ludicrous the first line of reasoning was. Granted, I didn’t really think through how stupid my first thought was, so there wasn’t any point to pondering it further.) Anyway, the last time I watched everybody trudge by (no diss to them–they were just past mile 15. They were doing great, but come on, who looks happy at that point?), the brilliant husband was there as well (he’d stopped in to see me “doctor people up.” What he witnessed was me passing out two tablets of motrin. I’m not sure I’m going to get a lot more sympathy for my job.) and when same said sedan came into view he commented, “Somebody important must be running.” (The man’s a freaking genius I tell you.) Not two seconds later he pointed and said, “Hey, isn’t that Adrian Fenty?” Indeed, the leader of the nation’s Capital was decked out in running shorts and a baseball cap and a Fleet Feet shirt (his parents own the store) and was cruising on past. My heart gave a little flip. I’ll admit, I’ve had a tiny crush on the Mayor since I shook his hand last fall. He was going door to door and I was staying at a house in the District and happened to answer a knock at the door and found him there, wanting to know if I’d support him in his bid to become DC’s youngest mayor. I said I would; no reason to confuse him with the details of me not actually voting in DC.

So Saturday morning as I mourned the absence of the camera, I commented, “Isn’t that kind of cheating? I mean, if he gets tired, he can just get in the car and go home.” BH looked at me with scorn and replied, “No way. That would never be lived down. It’d probably be better for his political career to smoke crack.”