February 18, 2005
Life on the streets
I was meeting some friends at a restaurant in Cambridge a few nights ago, and parked my car in a garage a few blocks away. Almost as soon as I left the garage, a light rain started to fall, so I picked up the pace by jogging. Up ahead, I saw a woman walking alone, and tried to steer clear of her.
This situation is always a bit precarious, because it’s easy to be freaked out at night by fast footsteps. I try to stay conscious of that, and either jog around a person or make some sort of innocuous noise -- a cough, say -- in the hopes that it conveys my innocence. So far, it had seemed to work, but not on this night.
The woman started walking diagonally, right into where I was jogging. Then, in the course of about two seconds, we abruptly met: I tried to stutter-step around her, and she heard me, turned around and stopped -- and because I was in mid-stride, that left me with almost no room to move out of the way. It looked, I guess, like I was running right at her. She screamed -- I mean, a real come-rescue-me-Batman scream -- and threw her arms up into a standing cower. I didn’t know what to do, and instinctively put my arms up, as if to show I meant no harm. But instead, now I was running at her with my hands in front of me.
We never actually collided. Instead, it was as if a small, invisible pole popped up between us, and we both bounced off in different directions. I kept jogging, and she ran off a few feet to the side.
"I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!" I said, looking behind me.
"JESUS!" she said, her hand to her heart.
"I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I was just... you were walking and... I’m sorry!"
As I jogged away, I realized that wasn’t a very good explanation. In fact, there wasn’t much in that interaction to convince her of my intentions -- and she very well might have gone home that night thinking her preemptive scream saved her from some street rapist. But it seemed like an even worse idea to turn around and re-explain, so I just continued on, a thwarted criminal who was late for dinner.
Posted by Jason Feifer at February 18, 2005 11:58 AM
Comments
People are unpredictable. One of my favorite things that New York pedestrians do is to come out of a store, pause at the doorway *as if* they are looking to see if anyone is coming when really they are just sort of looking vaguely in the direction they are about to start walking, and then step blindly out in front of someone (which used to be me, until I wised up to this behavior) who is walking up in the direction they failed to look. I've also learned to predict that when people turn their heads to look at something, they're going to end up veering in that direction (since turning one's head causes one's body to turn slightly as well). The things one learns when one walks faster than most people.
Posted by Francis at February 19, 2005 10:58 AM
That's what I like about you. You're just so bad and dangerous. :P
Posted by Moni at February 19, 2005 02:27 PM
What freaks he out the most is when a bicycle approaches me from behind. Bad enough but worse when the rider gives a warning microseconds before he reaches me. I always turn into the sound and not away.
Posted by XRAY Steve at May 24, 2006 10:11 PM
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