When I was a kid, there was a crossing guard on my walk to school.
Ms. T was her name, though I never figured out what the 'T' stood for. Probably something unpronounceable and vaguely Slavic. Anyway, we’re two lines in and I’m already getting off track.
Rain or snow, blazing heat or freezing wind, she was always there. Same spot. Same bright red “STOP” sign in her hand. Same tartan-patterned thermos of coffee clutched in her hands like a relic from a past life.
She wasn’t particularly warm. She didn’t smile much. But she knew all the kids’ names. And she’d bark at any driver who rolled a little too close to the crosswalk like she was defending her own children.
She did this for years. Maybe decades. She was certainly there for my tenure of first through sixth grade — back when kids still walked themselves to school and no one thought twice.
I never thought about her life. I just assumed she lived at the crosswalk.
Then, one day, she wasn’t there.
Rumor at school was that she’d gotten sick. Really sick. And not the kind of sick that you bounce back from. Just like that, there was no one to shepherd us across that busy two-lane street. We barely noticed until almost getting squished by a delivery truck - then we really did.
A few weeks later, a flyer went up in the school hallway.
(This would never happen today, by the way. But it does seem like we were a lot less worried about protecting kids back then.)
It was a thank-you note — from her daughter who had also gone to this same elementary school a decade before.
Turns out, this woman had been working two jobs. Her husband had passed years ago. I believe she kept showing up to that intersection, not just because it was a paycheck, but because it gave her purpose. It let her watch over the neighborhood. Gave her structure. And, I imagine, a sense of control. She never talked about her pain. Never asked for help.
She just kept showing up.
Her daughter ended the note with this line (and I’ll never forget it even though I read it over 40 years ago):
“She crossed hundreds of kids safely. But she crossed me, too — all the way to college. I’ll graduate this spring.”
You don’t forget something like that.
There are people like this all around us — the quiet grinders. The ones who carry more than we’ll ever know, and do it without applause.
And honestly, not to sound trite, but training can feel like that.
There are long stretches where no one sees the effort. No one claps for the consistency. No one cares that you meal prepped or got 7 hours of sleep or dragged yourself to the gym when life felt like a landslide.
You don’t get a certificate for logging your lifts (though we highly recommend you log your lifts!). There’s no marching band when you choose the hard thing instead of the easy one.
It’s a lonely kind of discipline. Even when you do it around others.
But maybe that’s the point.
Because the real rewards — better health, stronger joints, more self-respect, a body that can still do what you ask of it — don’t show up in the moment. They don’t always arrive with balloons and streamers.
They just accrue. Quietly. Like compound interest.
And then one day — when you run past your kid on a hike, or carry groceries for your elderly neighbor, or show up strong for someone else who needs you — it hits you:
This is why I trained.
Not for vanity. Not for Instagram. But because you needed to be ready — and you were.
That crossing guard never asked for anything. She wasn’t chasing a finish line or a trophy.
But she left behind something stronger than recognition.
She left all of us safe. She left her daughter prepared.
It’s one of those rare moments when the right person wins the real prize.
You may have noticed that my weekly plea for more subscribers got cut off last week.
Not sure if it was something I did, some glitch in my e-mail marketing software or God just saying "stop bothering people, Dan. They have suffered enough."
But, man upstairs be damned, we still managed to grow the list to 7,549 subscribers. Which is decent progress while still being far, far away from the goal.
For you math whizzes out there, I'm essentially trying to grow this list by 25% when it took me about 5 years of consistent posting just to get it where it is now.
But, I'm nothing if not a dreamer. If you are too, please feel free to send this sign up link to someone you think would enjoy these weekly posts. Maybe it's your Mom. Maybe it's your gym buddy. Maybe it's your grade school bully who you want to see cry.
Again, simple math states that if every one of you just got one person to sign up, I'd be at 15,000 subscribers by next week.
And you know what that means?!?! Yeah, me neither. But it would be pretty cool I think. Click this giant button below and send them the link of sign them up yourself.
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