On Avoidance
(I’ve recently come to the realization that my Advanced Composition course is much like writing a shit ton of blogs, though they are naturally not called such. This is the result of one such assignment.)
From time to time, I find myself meandering from class to class, my eyes up, observing the secluded world that is a college campus.
This semester differs from the last four of my academic career; for while I spent those semesters racing to my back-to-back classes, I lack any of said classes, therefore allowing me to bask in the glory of the slow-walker.
The typical slow-walker is just your average Joe—more than likely, his name will actually be Joe, or a female variation, or simply an epithet that implies nothing about this person is particularly outstanding—and is taking his sweet time getting to class while your pace comes to a screeching halt, and you find yourself deeply sighing as you roll your eyes, struggling to find a way to pass this guy who walks like a seventy-five year old Tucsonan drives. Yes, that ever present slow-walker is the reason you have missed every pop quiz in the first five minutes of your British Lit. class; however, it is not this slow-walker to which I refer. It is not the one who crawls along to class because her ankles are being rubbed raw by the heels she insisted on wearing—and why are you wearing those anyway? Don’t you want to avoid that whole bleeding-foot thing at nine-fifteen in the morning?—forgive me as I digress. The slow-walker to which I refer is the one whose gait is light, peaceful, observing, and patient. His glory is the one in which I sometimes possibly may even prefer to bask, for he is the person with whom you always makes eye contact, no matter how you may try to avoid it.
What I notice most about being a light-walker (the term slow-walker almost feels demeaning at this point, as there are at least seventeen Facebook groups devoted to expressing one’s passion to punch slow-walking people in the back of the head) is that one finds himself noticing more about the people around. Don’t get me wrong, my nosiness and keen people-watching abilities have always instilled a sense of observation in my race to class, but this observation is different. I watch as girls chatter to one another as they avoid the skulking men who seem to think that lurking on a college campus handing out flyers for The Bunny Ranch will make their lives less pathetic and creepy. Or the oh-god-please-don’t-make-eye-contact-with-me-oh-er-I’m-sorry-I-don’t-have-a-few-minutes-to-talk-to-you-about-how-I’m-going-to-hell-for-not-believing-what-you-do mad dash across the mall, when in reality you really DO have a few minutes, hell, you’ve got an hour and a half before your next class. You find yourself, though, as a light-walker, more responsive to the pick up lines being tossed out by even the most absurd on campus.
Take last Tuesday, for example. I am absolutely that person who never has a few minutes for your survey, unless it is a few minutes in which I can tell you how intolerant I find you. How hypocritical your preaching to me is, how…well, you understand. I am the person whose eyes only linger on yours for a moment before I suddenly have an incredibly text message to read, and oh my, what’s that? You saw me by Modern Languages today? At noon? Oh how strange! I didn’t even see you, oh you…could have sworn you saw me looking? I must have just been staring off into the…Yeah, I’m that person. I avoid making conversation with people who I have the unfortunate happenstance to run into; I avoid looking at you; I avoid avoid avoid avoid the Oh, we definitely should hang out even though there’s a reason why I haven’t chosen to see you in the last two years. But last Tuesday, I will admit, I fell for it. I was a light-walker, tranquil, peaceful, observing…when my eyes land upon those belonging to someone I probably should have avoided.
“Do you have a few minutes?” he says eagerly. Ah, damn…Well, here goes nothing,
“Er, uh…” I say with a great sense of hesitancy, “All…right, you know what, sure.”
Turns out, Mr. Eager Beaver wants me to write my career aspiration on my palm and to take a picture of me. Smile! And then,
“Awesome! Well, just so you know, we’re a Christian group on campus,” he informs me, clearly not one to ever desire to avoid eye contact.
“That’s so ironic. I’m Muslim!” I say, laughing. As I walk away from this interaction that I would normally never have encountered—as the person who avoids so many things in life to the point of absurdity—I continue to laugh.
I was no longer laughing at the irony, but instead the genuine pleasure it had given me. When we avoid things, it is generally because we anticipate the displeasure in its aftermath. We avoid foods we have never tried, fearing the I just spent fifteen dollars on uh what was that pasta called that I hated? We avoid dating that one guy, you know, the one you string along because you really do like him but are fearful of dating someone just because he isn’t in school, even though you know he’s far superior to the majority of the people you meet on a daily basis at said school and to a great extent, superior to you. We avoid physical contact because we just don’t like to be touched. We avoid confrontation. We avoid risks. We avoid the patient walk from class to class, not simply because the lack of time limits this ability, but because we don’t want to have to deal with the world around us—a secluded world, yes, but a world nonetheless. Avoidance ironically permeates our lives and personalities, save for the patient-walkers.
For the rest of us, however, perhaps UA should begin selling those plastic balls that hamsters run in, and we can all just continue to avoid life itself.
1 year ago • Notes