Dog Walks

I told Anna this post would be about my height, but that's the next one I promise.  I just got back from a walk with my dog, and it is wicked cold outside.  But I actually like that.  The cold is really refreshing, makes the world seem crisp and sharp, in focus.  Summer heat just makes everything lazy and wet, everything seems like you have to move through a haze.  Maybe that's why Southerners do everything slower than we do up north (or so I hear).  Tonight was a special example too; there was no cloud cover and the moon was full and bright.  I felt like the sky was naked without the clouds, and I could see the constellations above me, plus a few clusters of small lights that I really found cool.

I really love walking my dog.  It's good thinking time, which I really don't get enough of.  Not that I don't think during the day, it's just that I really need a nice calm space to do really good thinking.  My problem is that I'm a very distractable person.  When I start thinking about or doing some particular thing everything else stops mattering.  It makes it really hard to remember to do particular things, like talk to a teacher or hand something in or go to a certain meeting.  In the hustle of school and life I focus on what's happening and I forget about the other things I have to do.  Walking the dog is a good time to decompress, take a little while and think or whistle along with some music (one of my favorite things to do, I love being able to whistle).  It's really relaxing, except for when you have to pull out a plastic bag and hold your breath.

Tonight I also saw a couple of kids walking on one of the streets near my house.  It was a group of guys, probably younger than me, just walking around I guess.  I didn't know what to say or how to interact with them as I passed them, so I just kind of smiled and nodded and kept walking.  There's this sort of general rule about the difficulty of greeting people.  There are three parameters for the awkwardness equation: age, level of knowing them, and how many people there are.  I might also throw in sex, but that doesn't impact it nearly as much as the other three things.

First is age: it's much harder to say hello to someone closer to you in age as a teenager, whether they're slightly older or slightly younger.  Adults aren't hard to say hello to, there's a kind of politeness protocol that makes it almost rude not to say hello.  Level of knowing the person you pass on the street, in the hallway, etc., also can change the way you acknowledge them.  If I know someone close in age to me well enough to talk to them one on one, I'm definitely likely to talk to them.  On the other end, if they're a complete stranger but look friendly or in a good mood I'll say hello too.  The hard part is the middle section, the people you kind of know, but haven't ever really talked to.  You know them too well to give them the stranger "hi" with a smile, but not well enough to say "Hi [name]."  The last one's kind of obvious, but the more people there are the harder it is to say hello.  You're unsure of who to make eye contact with, so you're forced to sort of awkwardly look away.  It's made worse if they're a group of people talking to each other.  You feel you shouldn't interrupt their conversation, and you generally feel sort of outnumbered if your alone.  That said, if I even have one other person with me it suddenly becomes a lot easier to say hello to people.  It's probably a power thing, a sort of instinctual reaction.

Long hallways are the worst.  You see the person coming, it's unavoidable, and you have to somehow avoid eye contact or you have to time your eye contact just right so that you acknowledge and say hello to them just as you get within a few feet of them.  If you say hello or make eye contact too early, you have that awkward few seconds where you're walking past each other but neither party knows what to say.  A conversation is out of the question, you're both going somewhere, but the "hi" didn't do enough to fill that awkward silence.  I want to be more friendly though.  I like putting myself out there sometimes, smiling at the stranger and saying hello.  I always enjoy when it happens to me.  Even if you can't say hello to everyone you pass, I always make it a policy to at least smile.  When you look happy you're a lot more approachable, and I think that happy people are more attractive too.  Plus it just feels good to get a smile, and when they're genuine I think they're infectious.

Gloves are always a good idea on dog walks by the way.  My hands are still stiff.