Rugged school walks as a youth? Let Fitbit provide the data

Because taking walks remains one of the few things we can still do during the coronavirus outbreak, it was important to take one that could prove a point.

I took this particular walk with my family a few weeks ago, and probably wouldn't do it as a group now, given recent developments. But it did prove something that had me curious for decades.

It may not be as prevalent today as in years past, but parents and grandparents somewhere are still telling younger family members that they "walked to school five miles each way in snow up to my hips" - or some variation of that.

The point of the message has been the same since the days of one-room schoolhouses: We had it worse than you, so stop complaining.

Put me down as guilty in using that storyline over the years when someone complains about having to walk to a destination. However, with this thing on my wrist called a Fitbit, it would be easy to figure out, to the step, how far I walked to school and back each day. So I did.

I somehow convinced my wife and our dog, and my son and daughter-in-law and their two dogs that this would be a fun adventure.

The setting is the Moser Highlands subdivision, built in Naperville in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For those who know that area, I grew up on Robin Hill Drive and walked to St. Raphael Catholic School on Modaff Road, well south of my home.

Here's the interesting twist. I made this jaunt twice each day. To school, home for lunch, back to school, and then home at the end of the school day.

It's logical to wonder why I didn't, as a fifth-grade kid, ride my bike. This is my answer, and I am sticking with it: A stupid school rule ruined everything.

We were supposed to get off our bikes at the end of the long driveway at school and walk them to the bike rack.

It seemed more logical, and quicker, to ride the bike up to the rack. So I did. And one of the nuns, acting like a prison guard from a lookout tower, caught me doing it and said I couldn't ride my bike to school any longer.

To express my anger, I kicked dirt like Lou Piniella in a tussle with an umpire. I didn't kick it on the nun's robe, but it was a bad idea, nonetheless. The punishment turned into not being able to ride my bike to school ever again, which amounted to a three-year sentence. Truthfully, I never rode a bike much again for the rest of my life.

How about the bus? Well, that's another crazy thing. Our house sat right on the border for those who could take the bus to school and stay for lunch. So, a kid living across the street from my house could take the bus and stay. I could not.

To this day, I believe the nuns figured out where I lived and made the borders accordingly. They were maybe the first nonpolitical group to take part in map gerrymandering.

My friends, loyal to a fault, decided to skip riding bikes, and they walked with me. I think they felt they might miss out on something funny by not hanging around with me. Or, we all reasoned, by riding a bike we got to school faster - and who wanted that?

In any case, I took this walk again with my family from the school (because I had to park there) to my old house and back. I showed my family the very spot on which I was told never to ride my bike again.

And when doubling my math to account for two trips back and forth each day, it came out like this: It took 8,158 steps in total when walking from my driveway to the school entrance and back twice a day, which comes out to roughly 3.8 miles a day.

Further, that's 40,790 steps a week on school days, or 163,160 a month. With a school year being roughly eight months after taking out holidays and summer vacation, it comes out to 1,305,280 steps in a year. I'm estimating all of that at 608 miles a year.

From now on, my story about walking to school will have specific data to support it.

The other obvious question? Why didn't your mom drive you to school? That's an easy answer, one that floors young people today. We had only one car. And my dad drove that to work in Barrington.

Eatery site to change: Nearly 40 years ago now, residents along Houston Street in Batavia were uneasy about a Burger King restaurant going up on the corner of Houston Street and Batavia Avenue. It was just too close to their homes.

They could have said something like, "Plus, restaurants could come and go at that spot over the years for any number of reasons."

That's the case again, as Salsa Verde has closed its doors, following in the footsteps of Burger King and Hardee's at that spot.

It seemed only slightly odd to me the past few years that Salsa Verde would need a site in Batavia, considering its nearby location in St. Charles along Lincoln Highway.

The good deeds: There's been no shortage of interesting notes about good deeds sent to my email or floating over social media channels during the stay-at-home edict.

A few of my favorites included a resident ordering takeout lunch from Old Towne Pub in Geneva and getting a container of cookies with it. The frosting on the cookies said, "We love you from 6 feet away."

Also, a family in Geneva that noted it used to own a game store, left racks on the curbside filled with boxes of new games for anyone to pick up and use. It didn't take long for all of the games to fly off the shelves.

Finally, Certified Towing & Recovery in Batavia was offering to drive by on birthdays at the homes of children who love big trucks. The company would bring two trucks by and honk their horns as a part of the birthday message.

Just funny stuff: Then, there is this funny note on Facebook: "The whole country could be tested for coronavirus by noon tomorrow if Portillo's was running the drive-through testing."

And then there is the photo of a guy showing a hand with all sorts of little notes on it. He said he was washing his hands so much in following coronavirus protocol that "the answers to one of my middle school exams showed up."

A different Easter: Church leaders across the country, not just in the Chicago suburbs landscape, are reaching out to parishioners as best they can to somehow deliver the messages of Good Friday through Easter Sunday.

So much of our lives are extremely different under a stay-at-home pandemic order, so it is that this religious holiday is no different.

As a youngster staring at a small black-and-white TV in the late 1950s, a program called "Mass for Shut-Ins" would broadcast early on Sunday mornings.

I was too young to understand why or how someone could "attend" Mass through a TV program or why they would be "shut-in." But here we are some 60 years later, and many of us are getting messages about streaming video or televised religious services.

We've watched those that St. Peter in Geneva is sending via links through email messages. Yes, it's a different Easter season this time, but one that shows our spiritual leaders have not given up, and we shouldn't either.

dheun@sbcglobal.net