A Father, a Son, a Run, and Little Friend.

It was a bright Sunday morning in late September. Thomas Lake was waiting for his 11-year-old son at the finish line of a 5K race they both were running. Panic began to set in, as Lake knew his son could run the 5K in 30 minutes, and the clock was ticking towards 40 minutes. An hour earlier, father-and-son were driving when the 11-year-old noticed a fingernail-long neon green tree cricket on the hood of the car. It was a friendly little guy who crawled across Lake's shirt, and then sat on his son's finger for a long, long time. They gave it the name, Little Friend. As the race began, Little Friend was still perched on his son's wrist. "You'll lose him," Lake had warned. The boy had nodded solemnly in understanding. Back at the finish line, Lake frantically asked people if they'd seen his son. No one had. Finally, around the 45-minute mark, the child was in sight of the finish line. And Little Friend's neon green sheen was hard to miss, riding on the young runner's thumb. "There is more than one way to win a race," Lake begins to conclude, pointing at the fleeting, infinite treasures that can be stumbled upon in unassuming moments.

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