“The thing is, what if you collapse somewhere - I would have no idea where you were, and if someone found you, they would have no idea of who you are…”
My wife and I are having another conversation about my habit of going running early in the morning without any form of identification, no phone, nothing.
“What makes you think I’m going to collapse?” I say, feeling a little wounded.
“Well, even if you don’t collapse, what about that branch the other day?”
She is referring to an incident in which a large branch fell out of a tree right behind me. I heard a crack and then a thud, and turned to see a large branch lying where I had just been.
“Well I’m not going to carry my driving license whenever I go for a run. Where would I even put it?”
There is a pause during which my wife exerts some self control.
This conversation is just part of a much wider conversation about my running habits. Other aspects have included pieces of unsolicited advice, such as: “You are supposed to run as if you’re controlling a fall.”
“As IF I’m controlling a fall?” She hasn’t seen me run. I run, slowly and sweatily, through forests and along muddy paths, counting out by breaths to keep my heart rate down. Most of the time I’m controlling a fall, and it’s definitely not on purpose. Once, quite recently actually, I nearly fell head-first into a ditch half-filled with water. I remember this as the ‘identification’ issue is raised, again.
“I suppose there must be something I could wear that would do the trick,” I sigh. Later I look on the internet. There is something I could wear that would do the trick.
A few days later a package arrives, a sort of wristband with a printed section, it lists my name, date of birth, and an ‘in case of emergency’ contact number. Because you could put something on the other side for free I tried to think of something useful I could say about myself. I ended up with ‘NO KNOWN ALLERGIES’ in large block capitals. Useful if some rescuer was worried about whether their dog might make me sneeze, perhaps.
After a short while I came to be quite pleased with my new ID strap. I showed my eldest child who, when not at university, works in a residential home with people who have behavioural ‘issues’. They’re usually subject to what is called ‘deprivation of liberties.’
“Oh…” she says. “Some of our service users have those.”
I look puzzled.
“It’s because they’re at risk of absconding,” she explains.
Now, all of a sudden, I picture myself: I’m lying trapped beneath a fallen branch, unconscious, ashen, sweaty and covered in mud. Someone finds me and calls the emergency services.
“He’s wearing some sort of tag around his wrist, by the looks of things, he’s absconded from some sort of facility,” they say.
“Does he have any allergies?” the operator asks.
This is the second edition of my new ‘Saturday columns’ - short, funny, basically true* stories of mundanity and mishaps from my life. There’s not supposed to be any point to them. But they might make you smile. Bear with me if I don’t manage every Saturday straight away, I’m working on it.
*Some names, locations and other details may have been changed to protect the guilty.
Well this raised a chuckle this morning