Spare Time

Today after school, my mother picked me up from school, She dropped me off at the base of my apartment, and I waved goodbye. I entered the lobby to discover I didn't have my keys with me, so there was no way into my own apartment building. Realizing my mother would be gone for at least an hour or so, naturally, I decided to go outside and practice parkour to pass time. For people that don't know, parkour is the sport of travelling to one place to another as quickly as possible, in a very similar manner as travelling in a straight line. If there are obstacles in your path? There are a series of coordinated movements that are designed to pass over, under, and through the objects as quickly as possible. Good fitness and agility, as well as balance are essential to this sport, so I decided to run around my apartment complex practicing parkour in every possible situation I could think of.

I began with scaling a wall, and the fence above that wall. Then, I decided to climb up the pergolas that are extensions of the gazebos around my apartment buildings. I sat there for a while, bored, but then I saw an elderly couple approaching with the husband in a wheelchair, I decided not to disturb them and I continued on.

I practiced a couple vaults in and around the back of one of the apartments in my complex. I found a way to easily grab and pull myself up onto one of the balconies, so I'm considering informing management that it poses a security risk. I saw two boys coming home from school, so I decided not to give the impression that I was breaking into a random person's suite, and I moved away quickly.

My next thing I decided to do was to practice wall running, and although I was successful, there were not many walls suitable with enough friction to do so. So, I went around front of the apartment building and climbed up into the main balcony that nobody uses except for window washers.

In the end, after dropping a fairly moderately high height and having sore ankles, I did what i would naturally do to cool off: I climbed up on top of a gazebo and waited for my mother to come. Barely past 5 minutes later however, a pair of teenage girls were walking down the path towards the expression and they seemed quite surprised that some 13-year old kid somehow managed to get up onto a gazebo and was sitting there like it was perfectly normal. Deciding that it was safest just to leave, I went back to the waiting area in my lobby and used my backpack as a pillow to fall asleep. I had burned 30 minutes of time.


I woke up 70 minutes later when my mother "found" me, as I forgot to leave a message that I forgot my keys and my mother was thoroughly freaked out that I was missing. Just another normal day in my life.