I decided this evening after work, around 9:15 or so, to go deposit a couple of eBay checks that had been living in my wallet for way too long. I stuck my pen in my hair, wallet and keys in my pockets, and I was on my way.
Once I’d hit the ATM and checked my balance, I didn’t want to go home. It was too nice out. So, I decided to walk. I walked down Main Street, trying to decide where to walk. I glanced up at the Huntington Bank clock. Flip — 67 degrees. Flip — 9:22pm. Flip — 67 degrees…
At any rate, campus would be ideal for walking, being dimly lit and without through streets… but I wasn’t going to walk 15 minutes just to walk around, then walk 15 minutes back afterwards. Maybe I’d walk the residential streets. And that’s what I’d decided, until about five steps from the crosswalk by the Corner Grill. I could see the Administration Building down Court Street, and decided that the University wasn’t that far away… I crossed the street at the signal, and walked past the Corner Grill, past the Methodist Church, past the Courthouse, all the while fixating on the Admin Building and the cool, still night.
About five steps from Enterprise Street and three blocks from BGSU, I decided that the University really was too far to walk just for sport, and I made a quick left. This is where the usual mental drift that accompanies my solitary walks began. Not that I walk in front of moving vehicles or get myself lost, but that I think of the strangest random things, like:
- I really don’t have that many friends I can hang out with anymore. My Senior year at BGSU, I’d finally made enough friends that, if I felt like being social, I could call up Beth or knock on Donna’s door upstairs or go visit Tim two floors up. I still have two local acquaintances that I went to BGSU with, but I really wouldn’t feel as comfortable just calling them up out of the blue and going to their apartments to play PS2 or something.
- I’ve had this weird habit ever since that Creative Writing curriculum in third grade. When things happen around me or near me, I involuntarily try to compose the appropriate prose in my head — as if I were writing my life’s story moment by moment. I heard some guy make a noise down the alley and thought, “It sounded like a a retch, or grunt, or some other incoherent cry.” Hey, I never said it was good… only involuntary.
- I really have gained a lot of weight. I realized this as I looked down at my shadow before me. Then I realized that my arms touch my sides when I walk. Not just at my hips, not just my armpits, and not just my boobs. My entire side. This was somehow more disturbing to me than my recent discovery of a “gut flap.” It only strengthened my resolve to somehow lose 45 pounds in eight or nine months.
At any rate, I finally looped back around and joined up with Main Street again, this time the opposite direction. Walking back under the Huntington Bank sign, I looked up. Flip — 9:47pm. Flip — 63 degrees. Flip — 9:47pm…