Just Another Day in the Life

When I moved recently, I decided to do a social experiment: every few days I wanted to do one intensely odd thing. My reasoning being that society needs more exposure in learning how to accept things that don’t fit into norms. Sometimes I feel like people have come to expect instant gratification too much and I for one think that we could all use a few lessons in patience and tolerance. So I decided to make a game out of it, kind of like "the glad game" in Pollyanna, except much less proper, and way more absurd. It typically consists of me intentionally acting like a nut job around people that I don’t know at all and will likely never see again.

DAY 1

The other day I was walking along the sidewalk when I saw a cyclist in the distance pedaling in my direction. Sidewalks are free zones as far as I’m concerned and usually I’m more than happy to share part of the pavement with the other cement users, but for some reason as it happened on this particular day I was feeling a little mischievous and I decided to play this prank. This particular biker was about 50 feet away when an idea just jumped into my head (literally jumped, with some pretty spot on jiminy-cricket-like tendencies; right into my brain). I stopped in my tracks before this biker was anywhere near me and I stood frozen, staring as if I was seeing some kind of imminent and quickly impending doom, like I was witnessing bigfoot dressed in drag angrily tap-dancing my way while he shook a fist at me in time to the music in my head.

(Don’t worry. It’s just pretend; it’s a pretend game.)



I began to scream. And not like one of those uncommitted half-screams, you know the ones I’m talking about, where people don’t fill their lungs up with enough air and they usually roll their eyes so they don’t have to hold eye contact while they’re screaming because they feel awkward about how intense their face must look. I’m talking full on screaming here, like baby raptor meets dying infant. (I may have thrown in some tactful hyperventilating as well, but I can’t be too sure) It was an intense moment. I acted like this cyclist (who was still more than 25 feet away) was absolutely about to hit me. I was completely horrified, people stopped, people turned, people stared. They wondered why on earth I could possibly be howling in such a fashion. They glanced around and saw that I didn’t appear to be hurt, I hadn’t dropped an ice cream cone nor was any dark villain dashing away with my purse clutched tightly in his evil bony hand; nothing seemed amiss.
 

Next I dramatically threw my hand out in front of me, full palm facing outwards as I locked my elbow into place. If my hand could speak it would have been saying:



 “STOP! You there! Cyclist! You are about to cause a head on COLLISION!”



Naturally my biker was a bit perplexed and slowed his pace while he veered slightly to the side of the walkway. He was confused; I know, because he had his confused face on. He wasn’t actually near enough that he may have hit me even if he had wanted to (and I was starting to suspect he may have enjoyed the idea in some form).


I continued my screaming while I mixed in a few short hyperventilated bursts of air (for dramatic effect). At this point bike boy was pedaling pretty slowly and looking at me as if I was insane (understandably) He was CLEARLY not about to hit me, but he had realized that he was the reason for my demonstration. At least seven seconds had passed and I still hadn’t stopped my outburst or stopped staring at him. Within ten feet I minimized my terror-screams to whimpers-of-accepted-discomfort. I covered my face and ears with my forearms and crouched low to the ground; as if I was bracing myself for the smash from his spokes. I imagine that I looked like one of those people that is about to die and has a few split seconds to realize there is absolutely nothing that they can do about it. (like a pathetic, horror filled sad-hag).



I don’t know what he thought, and it wouldn’t have changed my behavior regardless but I’m assuming as bike boy pedaled by and rolled his eyes his mind was filled with thoughts along the lines of:



“I must have something on my face.” or “I look like her old soccer coach?” or “koeuBunf sidf havha rg figsdju6o phoj dba urgr…eiryrabgb.” or “she’s craaaay-z”



I didn’t cease my crouching until he was a several sidewalk squares behind me (I know because I was watching him upside down through the triangle my stubby legs made with the pavement.) Then I abruptly stood up and continued walking as if nothing at all had happened, if I could whistle well I absolutely would have. I think a few of the people on the street must have questioned if that experience wasn’t just a figment of their imaginations:


“Did that actually happened or was it was just a vivid dream from the most unusual parts of my mind?”
 

 A few blocks later when I got back to my apartment, I laughed about what the extreme exposure to my unusual version of life might cause typical members of society to feel like. At least he had something interesting to share with his wife later when she asked him how his day was:
 

“…her eyeballs were huge…seriously there isn’t anything on my face?!”




I saved a man from the mundane; that basically makes me a superhero.