Each year in every small town, the school buses fall silent, the playgrounds surrender to weeds and sparrows, and respectable citizens begin minding business that ain’t theirs. It is a dependable law of nature.

Remove a man’s daily distractions, and before long he’ll become an amateur detective, philosopher, or weather prophet. I, being confined to the control room of a radio station, naturally chose a different profession altogether—I became a professional observer of a woman walking around a city block.

Every weekday morning, ever since the schools emptied themselves in June, she has appeared with the punctuality of sunrise and the determination of a tax collector. She circles the same block five times without complaint, argument, or visible signs of insanity, though I confess that after watching her for two months, I can no longer say the same for myself.

Because of this, I reckon she works for the school district. Before summer vacation, I never laid eyes upon her, but the morning after the last school bell rang, there she was, striding along as though she had escaped captivity and intended never to surrender her freedom again. It seemed too much of a coincidence for Providence alone, so I accepted my conclusion without bothering it with evidence.

Now my observation post is not perfect. She begins her march on the far side of the block, beyond my field of vision, where honest measurements go to die.

Then she vanishes for a brief spell behind a broad cement and plaster column standing outside the station like an accomplice determined to obstruct science. The instant she emerges from behind that pillar, stopwatch in hand, I commence my solemn duty.

Great discoveries have been made with less sophisticated methods.

On the first morning of my investigation, the figures were respectable enough. One lap required ten minutes and nineteen seconds. The next consumed ten minutes and twenty-seven seconds. The third demanded ten minutes and thirty-two seconds.

Averaged together, she made the circuit in ten minutes and twenty-six seconds. Had there been gambling on pedestrian athletics, I could have established a respectable betting line before breakfast.

But perseverance is an astonishing thing. While politicians promise improvement and rarely deliver it, this woman quietly went about proving that the human body can accomplish what campaign speeches never will. Week after week, unnoticed by nearly everyone except one nosy fellow imprisoned in a radio station, she chipped away at those minutes as faithfully as a stonecutter shaping granite.

This morning her first measured lap came in at eight minutes and seventeen seconds. The second registered eight minutes and twenty-one seconds. The third crossed at eight minutes and twenty-six seconds. The average stood at eight minutes and nineteen seconds—a remarkable improvement of two minutes and seven seconds since the enterprise began.

Now, some folks devote their mornings to studying the stock market. Others contemplate world affairs, read great literature, or solve crossword puzzles with impressive vocabularies. Meanwhile, I have spent my summer timing a stranger’s morning walk with the seriousness of an Olympic official and the persistence of a man who clearly has access to too much coffee and too little excitement.

She doesn’t know she has an audience, and I certainly don’t imagine she walks for my entertainment. Yet every morning she wins a little race against the woman she was the day before, while I sit behind a microphone cheering silently from afar.

If this confession strikes you as peculiar, I cannot argue the point. I offer it only because it is true.

A man ought to be honest about his shortcomings, and mine is this: given a window, a timepiece, and enough uninterrupted minutes, I can turn another person’s exercise routine into the finest sporting event in town.