This morning I found myself pondering the sidewalk beneath my feet. Actually at the time there was no sidewalk beneath my feet because I was taking the direct route. What drew my attention to it was a lady who was out for a jog. She reached a place where she could have run around a corner along the road or she could have followed the sidewalk as it turned an ran straight away from the road only to return to it on the other side of the corner after traveling nearly twice as far. The jogger chose to follow the sidewalk.
This got me thinking about how arbitrary the sidewalk can be, and yet people still tend to follow it like it was a cattle chute. Maybe the jogger knew how far she was running and wanted to cover a specific distance or maybe she did not want to go through the grass for fear of twisting an ankle. Fine. But when I am walking around throwing papers at porches does it really matter if I walk where the side walk is? Suppose I walk three feet to the right, or perhaps two feet and eight and one quarter inches to the left? I might have to go around the occasional porch, but otherwise I think I will be alright.
I once stuck to the sidewalk religiously. I figured people may not want me to walk through their yards in the early morning hours. I have since concluded that I can safely assume the ground is where I am supposed to walk unless there is a "Keep Off the Grass" sign up. I now take the direct route pretty much everywhere.
It is a good thing, too. If I stuck to the sidewalk I would be stuck walking past a window every morning where there is a larger gentleman who always walks around with his lights on and curtains open completely naked. When it is dark at three or four in the morning it is hard not to look where there is light and movement. If I don't stick to the sidewalk I can completely avoid that house. Thankfully he is not a subscriber.
So if the placement of the sidewalk is so arbitrary then that means it could also have been placed differently. Perhaps a sidewalk was built over a colony of the little ants that pinch people, destroying the colony. Now maybe thanks to that sidewalk a child who is playing in that yard won't get those ants crawling all over him and start squirming and walk into traffic while he is distracted with the itching and the pinching. Sidewalks save lives! On the other hand maybe that same sidewalk was built over a seedling of a hybrid plant that we have never seen before, and maybe the nectar of that plant was going to be the cure for cancer, AIDS, or even liberalism. Sure that sidewalk saved that kid's life, but how many people has it condemned.
That might be a little extreme, but you will find I rather enjoy applying the butterfly effect to many things.
I would be interested sometime to sit and watch a corner like the one I described earlier just to tally how many people follow the road, how many follow the sidewalk, and how many really take the direct route straight through the grass. It is fascinating how people always walk on the cement rather than the strip of grass right beside it where the grass grows and the ground feels much more comfortable. It is almost like religion--you grow up walking on the Muslim sidewalk it is hard to get off. If you grow up walking on the Christian sidewalk it is hard to get off, and on and on. That would actually be rather encouraging if only more people were bringing their children up to be born-again, Bible-believing Christians. So now we have established that sidewalks are a cult. Once you join you almost always stay, and when you see someone just gleefully walking straight across the grass you probably look down you sidewalk-cult nose at him and wonder what is wrong with him. I am that guy you are looking at and when you reach our destination a quarter hour after I get there maybe I can explain it to you.
As the sun came up this morning I wondered one last wonder about the sidewalk: Why do they have to be made of a material that reflects every bit of sunlight directly into my eyes?
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