16 December 2007 - 7:45 pm

Fear. Fear is what motivates me, fear is what imprisons me. I want to go visit all the cool night spots of Downtown LA, but I want to be responsible, safe (and economical) and not drive. But then, how to get there in the shoes I want, and how to get back? Walk, taxi, Metro? Economical says walk, my preference is to walk for the exercise, but then there are the zombies, both walking and driving, to contend with. I was listening to a BBC news program and they mentioned ordinances in place, presumably in London, prohibiting curb crawling.

I had to rewind the podcast to get the definition, but curb crawling is exactly what I have been experiencing in my neighborhood, especially when I am closer to Olympic and the Staples Center. Men in their cars, driving at a crawl to keep pace with me walking on the sidewalk. It has never felt threatening in the physical endangerment sense, and there are plenty of people around so I definitely feel no potential violence, but again, annoying. The guy who not only curb crawled, but then circled around the block to do it all over again, as he had been blocking traffic before. I give no encouragement, I am walking, I am walking intentionally, briskly, in sensible walking shoes and outfit, nothing provocative at all. I am just walking. Why does a woman walking on a sidewalk seem like such an oddity? So, I'd prefer not to be harassed. And curb crawling, that is unwanted attention, therefore harassment. I am more than just bumps and holes in my body. I am the possessor of a brain too. "Fuck you!" I feel like shouting, "Would you do this to your sister, to your mother, to your wife?" But instead I keep walking, and don't look at them.

This last summer I went to a party celebrating the 60th birthday of my friend Cheryl, one of the first people I met and made friends with when I moved down here to LA. She is a character, and has lived a full life, which is considerably quieter these days. Back in the 1960's she was a stewardess on a famous (and now defunct) California only airline, complete with required weight/height numbers, and go-go boots and mini skirts as required attire. She visited the Playboy Mansion back then and recalls playing chess with a famous football player, honest, and nothing more. She was blonde and really naive back then, having grown up in San Diego, (?) and had legs to die for. She still has legs to die for, legs I will never have, I just am not designed that way.

Anyway, at this party, up in the hills of Brentwood, with a view of the ocean and a golf course below, I was enjoying myself by listening to others, when the conversation turned to birth order. A new arrival was talking about how the first child is the example, and the second child is the reaction to the example and thus the opposite, so if the first is rebellious, then the second is good, or the first is athletic, the second intellectual, or the first is tomboyish, the second ultra feminine, you get the picture. But the third strives to hide, playing the part of being invisible. When he said invisible, I spoke up and asked what he meant. He asked me what birth order I was, and I said, "Can't you guess? I haven't spoken all this time...I strive for invisibility." Actually I didn't, of course, but that's what I was thinking, later, about how I was interacting with the conversation was a perfect example of exactly what he was talking about. He told us it meant pretty much what I thought it did, someone who regularly tries to avoid being the center of attention, someone who avoids the spotlight on purpose.

For your information, any additional children then repeat the pattern, beginning again with first Example, second Reaction, no matter how many more kids there are. As I recall, #3 is unique in its role in the family, unless that #4 is outgoing, then #5 might be retiring, but not the same as invisible like #3.

Anyway, the conversation stuck in my head, it explained so much about my family dynamics. When my brother and sister both left the household when I was still in junior high, leaving me alone with our parents, it drove me nuts to have all that attention on me. My sister had formerly eaten up so much of their attention, strangely enough they assumed I would also take on her black sheep, rebellious tendencies and did a lot to prevent that from happening, never realizing I wasn't like her at all in that respect.

So fast forward, perhaps this is why the zombie attention is so undesireable to me. I just want to be invisible, because my birth order prefers it, and here I am totally being paid attention to and it is extremely uncomfortable for me, so squirmy not what I want, and just for my having moved eight miles, it has caused my life to look totally different. I just want to go for walks, I want to explore my new neighborhood, I want to get from my new home to Downtown, and other areas, I want to get my preferred method of exercise, my thinking time, my alone and recharging time, my look and see what's new around me time. As Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice says to Mr. Darcy(or at least she does in the movie version, I can't recall if it is an actual line in the novel) "I am very fond of walking." It is both an apology and a statement of her independent spirit as to why she cannot accept an unescorted ride from him to the nearby village she is staying in. It is how she will process the interaction that just took place between the two of them. It is her sacred personal time.

That is how walking is for me. It may look as though I am merely walking, but it is clearing my head, refreshing my spirit, allowing me to put my selfish thoughts and feelings into perspective, especially when I walk by homeless or drug addled people or brilliant purple morning glories smothering a chain link fence, glorious just to be alive.

I have moved eight miles farther east, and suddenly I can't rejuvenate myself how I am accustomed. I can continue to take my walks, and just as predictably, the zombie interest will continue just for my being visible. That is not refreshing or revitalizing for me. It instead is taxing.

I am stymied that a great, simple pleasure, that costs me and everyone else nothing, should be denied to me merely because of the unwanted attention I receive. No wonder I have been depressed since I moved.