Michael Northrop

I went for a run at the Central Park Reservoir yesterday. I did three laps, and my t-shirt was soaked through by the second. The path around the reservoir was full of tourists, and as usual, the Europeans were going the wrong way: walking clockwise in slow, ambling groups, right into the teeth of the type-A, Manhattan runners.

As I approached a group of Germans, I saw a little girl blindly pushing a stroller toward me. She was visible only as a mop of curly blond hair above the top of the thing and a pair of small pink hands along its sides. It seemed like I had plenty of Lebensraum to get by, but at the last second it was like someone radioed in a torpedo warning, because she veered due left, directly into my path. I literally had to hurdle it.

Replace the armored truck with a stroller, and you get the idea.

A stand-up stroller, turned sideways, is essentially an isosceles triangle, and I estimate that I cleared it at its midpoint. I was careful to lead with my left leg, which had to pass over the higher part of the slope, and trail my right. I made it with a few inches to spare. And so, once again, irrefutable Anglo-Saxon math triumphed over German aggression. The code-breakers at Bletchley Park would be proud.

An artist’s rendering of my leap.