A woman was walking south down the sidewalk on the same side that I was. I saw her early in my strides northward, and when she was about a half-block away, reassured her quietly, murmuring under my breath, “Don’t worry; I’m getting into the street.” I did so, and as we came abreast of each other — me in the street and she on the sidewalk — she rewarded me with a small smile, and a wave. I wrote about “The Wave” in June of last year (2019) but long before the novel coronavirus turned the world atilt, I chronicled “Sidewalk Shenanigans” (October 2016).
When I wrote of the small gesture of appreciation shown by people who have been granted a favor, like the driver giving way so that another driver can merge onto a crowded thoroughfare, I was memorializing my friend’s chronicling of the “little things” in life, the pleasures that we often overlook, like the thanks that one might get from that driver that we allowed to merge into a busy lane. But in “Sidewalk Shenanigans,” I was grumping about how inconsiderate people can be when walking the sidewalks of my micro-hood. It would irritate me that people that I could see, and that I presumed could see me, would seldom make accommodations for other travelers on the path, often forcing me into the street to achieve passage. Four years ago I wrote, “When I see an approaching walker, I start to make minute calculations: how fast is the walker; what side is he or she favoring and how soon will we intersect. I adjust my passage to insure that a sufficient amount of room is created for us to pass, peacefully.” Yeah; I’m not about that life anymore.
When perambulating the streets of my micro-hood, I still make calculations about oncoming traffic, but I’m not going to play “Karen” and demand to see the “walking manager;” I cannot know what amount of COVID-19 is in the approaching body, and how much will be exhaled in my direction. I am the weekday caretaker of a two-year-old grandterrorist and the “Cool Papa” to two other grandbeauties and I am taking no chances on walking through a deadly mist set loose by the coughing, snorting, sniffling and spitting of the casual ambler on the trails and sidewalks.
I remember being carried along in the human streams that flowed the streets of New York City, excited to be swimming with the diverse humanity of Manhattan, or holding onto the poles of the subway car, balancing against the sway and turn of the hurtling can as it rumbled through its tube. The subway was not a place where either social or physical distancing was even remotely possible, nor was it thought necessary in the 1990s. I cannot imagine myself in that environment now, where everyone is in physical contact with everyone else, and each exhalation is inhaled by every other passenger. But that was then, and this is now, where we have the COVID-19 virus refusing to magically disappear, and each of us needing to be cautious in our interactions with each other.
So, I walk and shop with care, inwardly grumbling when, in a store, I see a patron with their proboscis hanging over the top of a mask, muttering contemptuously, “Spreader.” When I see someone with a naked face, they receive the appellation of “Super-spreader.” On the sidewalks, I don’t try to guess whether or not oncoming pedestrians will be adhering to my own level of caution; I jump into the street.
But I do appreciate that wave of thanks, young lady.
cjon3acd@att.net