On The Sidewalk (Essay)

The Grim Reaper in an old lady.

That's who we just ran into. We were walking our dog Widget – a mini Dachshund, somewhere between the ages of 9 to 16 (they don't know his age because you tell dogs' ages by their teeth and he doesn't have any), who is totally deaf and mostly blind, missing half of his bottom jaw bone so his tongue always hangs a little bit out his port side, with a large burn-like no-hair bald spot going down the length of his back, himself already a visage of imminent mortality – when we saw an old woman walking on the sidewalk towards us.

"What do we do?" whispered Nakisa. I didn't say anything, but I just curved us over to the right, so we're walking on the grass, assuming of course that the old woman would do the same, for her part. Community Unity. Working together for a common goal of gap building. It's literally a circle of nothingness. Such effortless no-sweat work, I couldn't imagine anyone who could possibly have any trouble with it. You literally have to just keep doing nothing, but only in a slightly leaned away direction. Just slouch back while standing up, and you've got it. You'd think anyone would leap at the chance to be encouraged to be lazy in public. I didn't say anything to remind her, since I always hate to be rude in these kinds of social situations and tell someone to do whatever polite action might be required for any specific scenario at hand. I just naturally assume that the other person will be as sharp and considerate as me, and do for me the same thing that I'm doing for them. Treat me the way I'm treating you.

I am of course usually disappointed. Apparently I'm not smart enough to stop being put in dangerous situations by stupid people. Which means I'm probably not that smart.

"What a cute dog! Can I pet him?" she squawked. Oh god. Are we doing this? Seriously? I'd already picked up my 7 pound dog when we saw you coming, to especially prevent this kind of polite excuse for a human interaction. We know he's cute, thank you. Let's do all three of us a favor and walk away and try to become friends later, 6 weeks from now. I'm willing to pass up serendipity, just for this month.

Then, gripped horribly by my flash-pessimism imagination, I'm haunted by visceral pictures of this woman living alone, no one to talk to, waiting for invisible clouded death to take her sometime in the next fortnight, and the possessed feeling I have that we might be the only social interaction she has all day. I say possessed specifically because that's the only way I can specifically describe it, since I somehow for some reason DID put Widget down and let him sniff over to the woman while she pet him. All the meanwhile I'm being struck by horrendous mental lightning bolt imagery of headlines I've read lately trying to figure out if dogs can carry Coronavirus to other humans, or if it could possibly even directly afflict them as well. Did you just kill my dog you shriveled old hussy?

In the four seconds it took to have all these horrific hallucinations happen internally, externally Widget has already gotten bored with the lady and is walking back to me. She starts telling us a story about something I can't tell what because I'm already walking away and my mind is trying too hard to concentrate on ejecting from the tableau fast enough while still getting the walking balance just right so as not to run away so fast as to insult the poor lady, who – as I suspected – is now wheeling off into a small saga about an old dog she used to have since of course we are going to be her only interaction today and she knows it and by god she's going to get as much blood from this stone as possible.

Nakisa says some pat response back to her and eventually catches up to me. I ask what pointless story that woman felt like risking our lives for. She says she doesn't know, in a strangely hollow voice. I can already see the creeping edges of existential dread coming onto her face and giving it that particular 2020 flavor of Thousand Yard Stare, such a ripe and plentiful crop this season. Is this the banal personal interaction outside my house that leads to my inevitable demise? Homebody equals immortality. What have you done? Just for some sun? Just so you won't have to clean up dog shit off the linoleum? You lunatic.

We're back in the house. The dog shakes off. I remind Nakisa to wash her hands. We're already both in a daze, trying to figure out if we're heroes or suicidal just for talking to an old lady. We won't know for 5 to 14 days. And just because it might be one doesn't mean it can't also be the other. She probably even got home and thought about how rude we were for not having a longer conversation with her. God damn millennials won't even stop to ask how my day is going, she thinks to herself.

But we will walk again tomorrow. We need it. It's good for our mental health.