Jaywalking: A Fish Story

In a recent post here, I included an old story I wrote maybe 10 years ago. I have several more of these lying around -- a few, not a huge number of them -- and I thought I'd post another one, for the hell of it. I was never really clear at the time on what I wanted to do with these pieces, or what they were supposed to be. Short stories? Essays? Humor columns? Well, in (current) retrospect I'd like to think they were kind of like blog posts, except from the distant era of pre-blogging prehistory, back when Netscape was a separate company and all that. Hence the word "precambrian" in the last post's title. This post's title is the title of the tale itself. I changed the last couple of sentences around a bit, but otherwise this is as it was written maybe 12 years ago, for better or for worse. Any names you see mentioned are not real names of actual people.

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In college I used to jaywalk all the time. You had to. Everybody did. We were right downtown, and cars were always tearing around coming up the hill to get on the freeway. I guess people figured the freeway was coming up soon, so they ought to start driving as close to 55 as possible just to get ready. I always have to give this as a bit of background, just so people know how dangerous it all was.

Boy was it dangerous. From the bus stop I had to cross five or six busy streets to get to school, and then during the day just going between classes meant another three or four crossings, and then another six to get back on the bus. You get to be a real professional at it.

This is how it's done: You stand as close to the street as you can. If you can get away with it, stand out in the street. For effect, pick a spot in the middle of the block, as far away from a crosswalk as you can get. It's important to be nonchalant about the whole business. Just make sure there isn't any traffic coming, and stroll across. Don't run. You get bonus points if you don't look for oncoming cars once you're walking across. The important point is to be casual about it. If you're at a crosswalk and you cross against the signal, you can usually get people to follow you. That's always fun.

Sometimes you have to tempt fate. I think it's human nature to be that way. Most drivers are pretty observant even if they do drive too fast, and they slow down for you. Some don't have such a keen eye, but they always slam on the brakes or swerve or something. Somehow it always works out. No, the people you have to watch out for are the ones who do it on purpose. There was this one time I was walking along, minding my own business. I'm halfway across Columbia when I hear an engine revving a couple blocks down. The car's speeding up. I'm sure the guy can see me, and he's still speeding up. I guess he thinks he can scare me. Ha. Not very likely. Without hesitating a second, I stop, turn toward the car, and give the guy the finger. I stand there, just like that. I've got two different endings for this: In one version he keeps on coming, and I run and dive out of the way, just in time. In another, the guy screeches to a halt and we argue about it. Sometimes I just end it with giving the guy the finger. It all depends on who I'm telling it to, and what sort of effect I'm hoping for.

Actually the whole thing's a lie. A couple times I remember having people rev their engines, but I don't know if it was because of me. Probably they were just trying to get up the hill. There's no point in even trying to guess. I think the part of stopping in the guy's path and making an obscene gesture came later, the way you always think up the perfect insult half an hour after the argument's over. I thought the story was pretty good.

I was on a date one time and I told the story. I think her name was Krista. It was the first time we'd gone out, and I figured on impressing her. We were sitting down by the river having a bite to eat when the subject came up. I told her the one where I jump out of the way, and I still can't believe that we have people that psychotic out on the road. I don't think I placed myself on a legal crosswalk then, but mostly I did the innocent victim spiel, with just a dash of macho but not overly so. The reasons why we never went out again were, I think, unrelated to all of this. She took it like it was something that happened all the time, and my way of dealing with it was a bit childish. Oh, well. Her loss.

Another time I was telling Mike, my boss, about it. We were out having a beer after work, and this time I played it for laughs. This was the jumping out of the way story too, but I worked in a bunch of details about the guy and his car to make it seem like he was a complete buffoon. Who ever heard of running somebody down with one of those tiny Yugoslavian cars? Why, it could hardly get up the hill. It came off pretty well. It's all in the timing. Then he said something similar had happened to a friend of his, except the driver was really trying to hit him but ended up hitting a fire hydrant instead. The way he told it was just hillarious. I guess you'd have had to have been there. I hate being upstaged. No matter what it is, somebody else always has a better story. This story never gets quite the effect I'm looking for.

Well, no, actually that's a lie, too. I know I told Mike about it one time, but only vaguely, and I don't know how he reacted. Didn't create much of an impression. It sounds better to have something memorable, like being upstaged by an even weirder story that Mike swears is true. Hey, if you can't lie about lying, what can you lie about?

I guess if you think about it, who's to say that maybe I never actually told the story to anyone, either? I could be making that up. But I'd be lying again if I said so.

I'm sure my brother's heard it two or three times. Not all the same version, either. First was the short version where I end it by flipping the guy off. I hadn't thought of either of the endings yet. This story was mostly raw machismo, which you have to parade around in front of younger brothers now and then just to keep them in their place, plus disbelief.

In another version, I did the standard diving-out-of-the-way bit. I made up the part where the driver and I scream at each other just for him the third time I told him the story. The guy turns out to be a real mental case and I run away. Otherwise I'd have to describe what the fistfight was like, and that's just not in character for me. No, the guy acts like he just got out of the state mental hospital. Hair going all directions, driving a Dodge Aries K, a really big guy, looks like a bank vault that a bomb had gone off inside of. He starts screaming incoherently at me and makes to attack me, so I get out of there as fast as I can. If I tell the story again I'm going to have him call me names. That always gets sympathy. Probably "commie pinko liberal" or "Zionist running dog" will do the trick. All depends on the audience.

So anyway, I've told my brother a few versions of the story. I don't know whether he's caught on yet. He's pretty quick, but this kind of story might just not be something you remember. If he ever brings it up I'll pick one version to be true and deny I ever said any of the others. That seems to be the best way to weasel out of it.

I have a car now. I think I hate jaywalkers. The bastards are just asking for it, every single one of them. I mean, some of them even jaywalk with strollers. I loathe them all. Sometimes I even speed up and rev my engine at 'em, just to give 'em a scare. Or maybe I just made that up.