The Next Cover For the Cookie Jar

Truth be told I do have my share of strange habits. Most of them serve some kind of purpose.

My best friend, EH, tells me that obsessions often grow out of some kind of protective behavior, behavior that protects one from a desperately unpleasant truth.

If one is foolish enough to expect 100% - and works hard, earning 90%, well, that can seem like failure. You try for 105% and achieve 95 - still failure.

It's like the tortoise and Achilles - no matter how hard you try you can never catch up. The only way out is to totally reject everything you believed in that forced you into this absurd race in the first place ...

... or ...

... you compensate by doing little things that you CAN get right - like checking the windows every night - or arranging the dishes just SO or lacing your shoes a certain way....

... And suddenly what started as a little habit loses its connection to compensation and takes on a horrid life of it's own.

Thus is birthed the common, or, garden variety, obsession.

So, somewhere between Heaven and Las Vegas lies a street and I'm crossing it.

As a child I was well trained to respect the cops, help little old ladies and be a gentleman when I could.

Because of this it's really hard for me to do simple acts of defiance, like crossing the street against the "wait" light - even in the middle of the night.

I stride up the the lights, mostly at the corner of High and Congress, arguably the busiest one in town, set my balance and tap the "walk" button with my toe, usually on the left.

Like my post on the joy of observation I love to see the looks on people's faces as they try to process it all.

People pass me by, some with a look of vague malevolence, or a facial shrug that practically screams "Asshole!!" because I'm dumb enough to actually care that the "walk" signs are there for a reason and we should obey them, as good citizens.

I think the word "obey" has kind of left our collective conciousness - that doing something purely because one is TOLD to do it is as alien as buggy whips and lager beer in buckets.

At the same time it's kind of cool to wait as cars turn by you. A pedestrian following the signs kinds of throws off the flow of traffic, it disrupts the flow by going with it.

The payoff comes when the light turns to "walk" - and it does so for all four lanes of traffic. I can stride across like I own the street, because, for those 15 seconds, I really do own it.

I can stride, hop, funky-chicken my way across, be totally myself and there's not a single damned thing anyone can do or say about it.

For those15 seconds I'm a late-middle aged Native-American frakkin' GOD and there not a Goddam thing anyone can do about it.

It works out just right, because, frankly, I'd hate to be a God for any longer than 15 seconds - just thinking about the amount of email you'd have to answer freaks me out.

I mean, you could only answer, say, what, 95% of it?

...and THEN where would you be?


-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States