The Thing about Stretching is it’s Painful and That’s Okay

When I was in Year Five, my teacher was very big. She told us that one way to deal with stress was eating. She smiled in a nervous way when she said it. Someone asked if she was stressed and she said, ‘No.’ When I got home I ate lots of sugary cereal. Like, three bowls. My dad said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I told him about this quiz I had the next day, and what my teacher had told us, and he looked at me and said, ‘That’s a crock of shit.’ After that we started running a lot. Just me and him. And in the heat we jogged through parklands. And in the heat we stretched. He told me that when he first met Mum they were at a water park and when he asked if she wanted to ‘double’ she said no. We laughed. I don’t know why. We just did. When I think about the Texan heat it reminds me of jogging through suburbia with my dad.