After the Boot Camp race, Mr. W and I joined Vanessa and Jay at a nearby shopping outlet and had lunch, swapping stories and licking our flesh wounds. On top of bruises on both knees and down both shins, I was missing two strips of skin down the length of my left shin. I’d been dubious when Vanessa told me to wear pants, especially when I was in duo-layered jogging pants watching all these women walking around in cute tiny running shorts before the race. I pointed that out, and Vanessa whispered, “You’ll thank me later.” My GOD was she right. She said one girl was crying toward the end of the race, but I didn’t see her. Jay was amused at the guys who powered through the beginning of the race, showing off, as those were the same men who were hyperventillating and dying after the first obstacle, having run out of juice.

We did a little shopping, and Mr. W bought 3 tubs of protein powder at a VitaminWorld outlet. Jay bought a bottle of calcium supplements because the topic of milk products came up over lunch and he expressed emphatic distaste for milk, cheese, etc. and Mr. W said, “Really? Then where do you get your calcium from?” Jay had shrugged, and I told him that Asian (me) and black (him) people are genetically predisposed to osteoperosis, and it’s easier to pop a pill a day to stave off a later problem, than to have to take precribed medication or be hospitalized for brittle bones and broken hips later on in life. I’m a strong believer that it’s easier, more painless and cost-effective to prevent a problem than to have to fix a problem later on. So at VitaminWorld, Jay (with some more prompting from me) bought the bottle of calcium tabs.
When Mr. W and I were driving home, there was a bit of silence in the car, and Mr. W suddenly chuckled and said, “I wonder if Jay felt pressured to buy the calcium.”
“What?”
“I mean, he didn’t seem like he really wanted to get calcium until you said all that stuff outside the store.”
“I don’t CARE,” I said flatly. “I absolutely believe that he needs to be taking those calcium supplements and whether he felt pressure or not, I still think I may have saved him some big grief in the future. Besides, he can always NOT take them, and it only costs him like $6 bucks.” My dad’s a new osteoperosis victim and is taking prescribed medication for it. The medication is causing havoc on his liver and now he’s dealing with a liver issue on top of all this other problems, and trying to figure out how to balance medications so that he can get the effectiveness of one without counteracting with the side effects of another, and hoping the side effects of one or the other isn’t going to kill him instead. Being lactose intolerant like most Asians, I bet my dad wishes he’d just taken a calcium tablet once or twice a day in his youth.

But maybe that WAS too imposing of me for Jay, I mean, I HAD just met the guy for the first time that day… But he makes Vanessa happy, so he needs to stick around for as long as possible to keep doing that for my friend who is so loyal she didn’t leave me behind in the dust during a hard race when she was clearly physically able to have recovered and shaved minutes off her time had she just thought of herself before thinking of me.