Dr. Sidewalk or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and (Realize I) Love the People Around Me

For to whom some detail of this writing may have been previously divulged: forgive the chance in title, the change in topic.

For your analyses, I present to you my humble return to the blogosphere. Somehow, I half expected that word to pass the spell check, but I don't mind that it didn't.

For Wednesdays.

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It takes a lot to walk on a sidewalk. It takes more to retreat from its solidarity, its order, and its utility and return to the grasses, the dirt, the rocks. The paths beaten, only soon to become another sidewalk.

It always happens to me on Tuesday mornings. Tuesday and Thursday mornings, both. I am enjoying my walk across a fair portion of the campus towards Gordon-Palmer Hall. I am breathing in the air as it sits on top of the quad, nearly full in its stagnation and thickness with the growing heat. I am realizing what a spoiled treat it is to be headed to my first class of the day at 11:00 a.m. I am wondering how far we will venture today in MA 237 - Applied Matrix Theory (An Introduction to Linear Algebra, I ought to call it). I make a turn here, a cross there. I cross at the cross-walk in front of the natural history museum, taking up a tiny bit of that particular CrimsonRide bus's time once again. I turn left ahead and then... there it is.

The sidewalk.

A simple sidewalk, ample width, serves its purpose well. Traverse the space across the driveway between two buildings, make it from the quad to Hackberry Lane. Plain and simple. If only it were...

I loathe this sidewalk. I think it, in particular, out of every sidewalk that has ever been planned, lain, or walked upon, out of any that ever was, is, or ever will be, reflects all that is wrong with human kind.

We are inconsiderate. We are self-centered. We are meek. We are pushy. We are selfish. We are vengeful. We are oblivious. We are pretentious. We are kind. We are distraught. We are walking, hurrying, wasting time, all of these things at once! They all happen there, there of all places, each slab upon concrete slab.

I have not made an effort to seek out this knowledge, yet I make a reasonable assumption. There is a large biology lecture that concludes in the Biology building on Hackberry Lane at 10:50 a.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are also a number of math classes, with varying capacities, that end at the same time inside Gordon-Palmer Hall.

That's where they all come from.

Three, four, sometimes somehow five abreast, barreling towards me like a freight train at a leisurely pace with a meager gait. On the sidewalk. Moving in a totally unpredictable zig-zag, worthy of scholarly research and analysis on the criterion of completely naturally showcasing chaos theory. On the sidewalk. Brazen behind their wide, wide, extra-wide rimmed sunglasses that render no face to share a smile with. Behind their backwards baseball caps, backwards visors, upside-down backwards visors that must have the properties of race horse blinders. On the sidewalk.

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You would think that my mind would have the capacity not to toil with such anti-confrontation. Can't you easily walk on the dirt, Joseph? Can't you easily weave your way in and out, back and forth since you're walking a mile a minute anyway? If it offends you so deeply towards the bone, why don't you just take the sidewalk by the concrete and walk on it? This is just foolish and self-centered. You might easily be asking all of these questions, thinking these thoughts. You might not. I only suggest them because I've considered them myself, you know? I didn't pull them out of thin air, and I certainly don't know what you are thinking. If I did, oh if I did...

The fact of the matter is, it's not about the sidewalk. I'm not even so sure it's about the people, but we'll get to that later. It's about me. It's the fact that no matter how many times I walk the gauntlet, and stare down a trio of friends from yards out, I will always move. Do I think I should? Me knee-jerk reaction is to say, "No, of course I shouldn't move. The sidewalk is just as much mine as it is theirs, and we all learned in kindergarten that you stay to the right of things. Go through the right door, go up the right side of the stairs, drive on the right side of the road. You should stand your ground." But the fact of the matter is, I hold a certain very contradictory fact in very high regard: you never do something unless you want to. Plain and simple. No one - read, no one - makes you do anything you do. You make the decisions. You eat the food, you type the letters, you take the steps, you smile or frown, just you. So if I stop and get out of someone's way, it wasn't the whim of some celestial demoralizer. It's me. I decided it was best.

Why?

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I might have found the way to give us our answer, albeit in a very grandiose, self-righteous-sounding way. We all know good and well that if I'm already worrying about it, I'll make plenty of explanation to the contrary thereafter, so I continue. It reads:

The way I see it, compassion is a double-edged sword. Righteous and edifying, yet a curse, two in one.

Am I saying that I am a saint because I don't extend the reality to you that sidewalks are two and three people-wide for a reason other than you walking in tan-tandem with your friends? No, I am not. Am I saying that I bear a heavy burden on my shoulders for taking the steps to leave your walk back from class undisturbed? Again, most certainly not.

What I am saying is this: I can't recall ever having pointed out to someone that they are "in my way" when coming upon them on the sidewalk. No matter having to make my way out into the street, pausing for a moment, or taking a different step altogether. I doubt I ever will. I don't consider this a virtue, I don't think my unknown peers around me should thank me for this courtesy, either. Rather, I wish anyone who takes the time to notice it at all, or its ends, even, will recognize it for what I do - a window, facing one of my deepest natures.

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I am going to take care of you. I am going to worry about you. I am going to sacrifice comfort, ease, and prudence for you. (And most of you know how much I love to be on time.) Even if be it only ever in the most subtle ways, I am going to do something for you, and I always will. And I will expect nothing in return.

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Here comes the worry. "How could you spend pages explaining how wonderful you are and not expect us to find you self-centered, self-righteous, self-over-zealous?" Oh, but your folly is there. The fact that I posed this question myself, and straight-away, nonetheless, shows just how I did expect this. I do expect it... I think. Yet I feel like even if that response strikes you, you'll keep reading, you'll see me again, you'll meet me, you'll have an extra eye on me, and then you'll know that if I had any intent to bring accolade upon myself, to make my portrait in your minds gleam, I would not be the same person doing all of these things.

Why do I bring it up, then? Because I worry that none... scratch that - that too few of you see any return from this nature, from this essential, though perhaps tiny, part of who I am.

What can I do to make me worth your while? To open another window on me for those of you who don't run into me on the sidewalk on a daily basis? What can satiate this deep worry in me?

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I can blog.