The Silly Walker

Sometimes, if I hap­pen to be walk­ing some­where, I’ll walk next to some­one just to see how they han­dle the awk­ward­ness. I find that most peo­ple are so uncom­fort­able with it that they will actu­al­ly slow down. Sometimes I’ll also match their pace, and they end up slow­ing down so much that it becomes very obvi­ous, and I can tell that they start to won­der if I’m doing it on pur­pose.

This morn­ing, I was walk­ing next to a woman seemed so dis­tressed by it, that after a while, she feigned run­ning for a bus that she had absolute­ly no chance of catch­ing.

2 comments

  1. Exploring oth­ers’ per­son­al bound­ary bub­bles is fun for every­one. Try giv­ing your next new acquain­tance a kiss (or two) on the cheek next time you’re intro­duced. They do it in Brazil all the time. You’ll get maced faster than you can call Kobe.

  2. That would creep me out, prob­a­bly. I mean, if it was a young, fash­ion­able male with head­phones on, then maybe not so much…but all I can pic­ture are the gri­z­ly denizens of Fitchburg here (today some old man actu­al­ly called to me from the side of the road that i was “pret­ty cute, wan­na have lunch?”). I’m sure if I was pur­pose­ful­ly walk­ing next to some­one, it would­n’t be as bad, because I’m small unthreat­ning female.

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