Ode to a Moving Sidewalk

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I grew up in a town with cows and grass and small sandwich shops, where the street lights only flash after 10pm, and as a result, the biggest drama of the year comes when your friend crashes her jeep into the car of a classmate’s mother in town center–a small cross section of roads where the blinking yellow and red hurts your eyes after dusk.

What I’m trying to say is that never have I been a city girl.

Resulting from this lifestyle is the reality that I have spent little time crossing streets. Sure, I’ve jogged through my neighborhood, up and over quiet roads like Dutton and Peakham which wind through colonial houses and garlic farms. I’ve skipped over to friend’s houses, biked to the nearby soccer field, and even walked the neighbors’ pet, Roxy the Portuguese water dog, on occasion.

Yet these roads are just simple curves on a map of geographic complexities. Enter city life, and what emerges is a grid of tightly wound edges and abrupt turns: I have never had to brave this systemic form of movement in my day to day life before now.

With the changes in how I get from Point A to Point B, certain revelations have happened upon me, like a stray eyelash they have been a nusaince until figured as fulfilling. Because even pesky half inches of hair have led to the occasional wish.

Now, be warned, what I’m going to say will make me look fairly foolish. I recently realized the key to crossing from one corner of the street to another diagonally. If you are about to cross forward, but the walk sign is not on, then cross to the right or left. By the time you do this, the walk sign will ignite in the perpendicular, and you will not lose time.  City people, of course, have understood this for decades. I myself had never given street-crossing strategy a second though. I guess I have always that person who set my sites on walking forward, forgetting to check to either side of me.

When I figured this out, I felt really smart, then really dumb (for not having realized this sooner), then almost enlightened, as if I had discovered something so obvious that it had to have been consciously concealed from me for a reason.

And then it hit me–

You see, I used to cross the sidewalk like a zombie, as if it was moving by itself. I never had to do any of the work, and now, when city life is bustling all around me, I am forced to look up and realize these innerworkings of life in a conscious and purposeful pursuit. Looking up, has allowed me more time to look down or look inside or really just look anywhere worth looking. It’s worth remembering that there’s no rush. Look up, but do it so you have time later to look around–enjoy the view for a while, you deserve it.