Melissa's Place

Crossing the Street

I can’t cross the street when the orange Don’t Walk sign is up. I can’t J-walk, even if there isn’t a car for miles. My friends and I will be out and they’ll glance casually to either side and just begin to head across the road, despite the fact that it’s not legit, and I am stopped dead in my tracks. It’s just a thing I have, I guess. I will apologize profusely. I can’t use reason to explain it. My legs seem to have a will of their own and they will not cross.

However, the truly ridiculous thing is that one might surmise that a person with my affliction would not often find herself skimming by glances with motor vehicles by the hair of her chinny chin chin. And yet somehow I do. One would think, “That Melissa will NEVER get hit by a car…she is SO cautious!” Yet when I do decide, sometimes, to cross illegitimately, I think I’m so jerky and spontaneous in my decision that I don’t take proper care in looking both ways. I think I suddenly decide to throw caution to the wind and then throw my fate into the hands of speed (the speed at which my panicked legs can carry me across the pavement). And that is my downfall. One might hypothesize that perhaps it is BECAUSE I have had such close encounters with bumpers that I am so very cautious. Yet, if you can follow my reasoning, I think perhaps it is my caution that has worked against me. That has made me doubt my own instincts and they have, in turn, been dulled. I have relied for too long on the digital external stimuli instead of my own keen drives and they have now forsaken me. I have lived in captivity for too long.

Either way, if I am to perpetuate by Darwin’s standards, I will use any means I must.The Gift (see earlier blog) tells me that I should just trust in the stoplights.