Excerpts from Marginally Crossed: An Essay
It'll be nice to start the blog with a little more info on my background. I try to be revealing but concealing at the same time. The whole point is to point out the absurdity of everyday life. It is also an attempt at some dry humor, so bear with me. Maybe if you like I'll post some pictures to illustrate. ;)
Crossing streets was never my favorite activity. I am little used to
it. I grew up in the country, five miles from the nearest small town
where I went to school (with only two traffic lights, last time I
checked), ten miles from the nearest big town with proper crosswalks
and traffic lights that I never had to use, and thirty miles from the
nearest major city where crossing busy streets was only marginally
more occasional (marginally being a term that tends to be
abused if one took calculus in high school and never took math again,
especially if one decided to be an English major and to never bother
with numbers. Being able to use that word is ample evidence that one
did learn something in high school calculus, particularly that the
rate of change of an equation can be a marginal or slight
change or something like that). But, more annually than marginally,
I grew up crossing the busy streets of Salt Lake City, Utah when my
family paid our annual pilgrimage to Temple Square, holding hands
with my younger siblings and waiting patiently for the light to
change as we crossed the blocks between our chosen parking lot, the
Conference Center, and the Square itself...
Crosswalks have been a part of my everyday existence here since I
left my little country home in Texas to attend Brigham Young
University. Until recently, I have never had to bother with traffic
lights to get to campus, it was always watch for cars and cross the
intersection quickly without irritating what drivers would have to
wait for you. If possible, cross in a group. My only regular
encounters with traffic lights were en route to the Provo Temple,
having to cross major intersections two or three times to get there.
In this case, crossing streets has been a case of hitting the button
on the traffic pole, waiting patiently for the light to change and
traffic to stop, and then walk while the signal of the walking man on
the black box on the pole across the street glows and the signal
beeps repeatedly with a CHIRP! CHIRP! Or a Bop-bup! And counts down
the number of seconds until the red hand flashes and stays and then the waiting cars have the
right to move and possibly turn you into mincemeat if you don't get
across fast enough. Or one would think they have the right to do so,
if one is an irritating enough pedestrian, which one is constantly
trying to avoid being. Pedestrian etiquette is not one of my
strengths, alas.
The little crosswalk with light poles in front of the Tanner Building
is another case entirely. Having worked in the vicinity of Helaman
Halls and the Cannon Center, it is always the last small hurdle
before descending the hill to freshman territory... One of its more
curious aspects is that the buttons to push for the crosswalk signal
are different on different sides of the street. On the East
side, it is a small metal button in a large yellow case that likes to
resist being pressed down, while on the West side it is a large metal
button that one can simply touch to hear a satisfying beep. And when
the signal to walk turns on, it goes CHIRP! CHIRP! But the walking
man does not stay up for very long and one must scramble across the
road in the company of whatever crowd of freshmen that are still
straggling across in spite of the red flashing hand, using their
presence as a cover for the questionable legality of crossing the
street while the hand is flashing or, more obviously, holding still
while cars are waiting on both sides of the light to pass. Sometimes
one crosses here in a panic if one is running late or desperate to
beat the flashing hand. My worst crossing to date at any BYU traffic
light, particularly this one, occurred last spring term. I had
arrived at my class at the JKB only to realize I had forgotten to
turn in my work keys at the Helaman custodial office. Having just a
few minutes before class, I ran back outside and to the crosswalk and
impatiently ran more or less at a red light. A police vehicle—the
ignominy of it!—screeched to a halt and honked angrily while,
shamefully, I ran back to the Cannon Center and discreetly turned in
the keys. I suspected that the policeman in the car would report my
illegal crossing, identify me somehow, and report me to my work
supervisors for crossing the street in front of him at a red light in
order to return one of their keys I had accidentally stolen.
Fortunately this fear never materialized and I have safely suppressed
the incident until now.
Crossing University Avenue is a completely different can of worms, if
one likes their worms exposed to one of the busiest streets in
central Provo and at the mercy of oncoming traffic. I recently moved
to an apartment complex opposite University from campus, a good
twenty-minute walk to the library and easily five, if you drag it
out, to your certain death if one does not cross the street
carefully. Crossing the street in midday invokes the crossing of a
river of fire or molten lava that one enters at one's peril. The only
thing standing between me and work and a day of productivity on
campus is this wide, busy street full of rushing cars that up until
this term one took pains to avoid without provided transportation.
Having no vehicle of one's own, and one's walking turf naturally
expanded by the change in living quarters, however, one realizes that
these risks are necessary and the wait at the traffic light is worth
whatever income or peace and quite that one can find on the other
side (unless, of course, it is a loss of income due to negligent
spending at the BYU Bookstore).
To be honest, the wait at the light at four in the morning on the way
to my custodial job is the least of my problems. Hardly any drivers
are out at that ghastly hour—what time am I out there these days?
Three-fourty in the morning? Bah. Hardly noticeable. One waits more
patiently than one would otherwise in broad daylight, what few cars
there are slink past like shadows, stop readily at the light, and
then zoom past once you have crossed.
The most of my problems, on the other hand? Crossing in the middle of
the day to get to Campus for no reason whatsoever except for one's
own pleasure, or crossing in the evening during rush hour traffic in
order to get home. Certainly the benefits of an excursion from the
apartment—sunshine, fresh air, and exercise—outweigh the costs of
having to pack everything one must take to campus, but when one
considers that one has to cross that marginally perilous street to
get there one is rather more inclined to sulk in one's bedroom, curl
up on the bed, and waste the afternoon on a lovely nap, in spite of
knowing that it is more proactive to spend time outside of the
apartment than inside.
There is something my brain does not like about crossing University
Avenue. While it is a lovely street to drive down when one is safely
inside a moving vehicle, and it is a gateway to so many pleasures
elsewhere, the reality for the pedestrian is that the road is a
torrent of moving vehicles all large enough to kill a human if impact
occurs at the right momentum, which at the speed limit on University
Avenue or just the sheer appearance of the cars rushing past could
likely happen. Furthermore, when one is eager to get across and is in
a hurry to simply not be bothered by crossing the street, one is more
inclined to view drivers as one's mortal antagonists who would love
any excuse to strike and kill you for no reason if you set so much as
one foot into the road beyond the safe limits of the crosswalk. One
brings to mind an image of Gandalf confronting the Balrog in Moria,
banging his staff and shouting, “You shall not pass!” but
unfortunately in this case Gandalf is the guardian wizard of the so
many drivers who are out to get you and you are the Balrog who is
going to give them a bad day if you misbehave. So one waits until
those perilously antagonistic drivers are willing to slow down and
brake in front of the lights at the change of color, contemplating
how one shall get across the street safely. One brings to mind, with
an uneasy nostalgia, the lessons from Barney and Busytown on how to
cross the street safely: look both ways before crossing, wait for the
light to change colors and the cars to stop. Halfheartedly, one tries
to be true to one's childhood values, but does a twenty-something
really care more about their their childhood television shows more at
a moment of peaceful reflection or a moment of impending death?
And then the green light that seems to be holding on for forever
finally changes to yellow and then to red and then the red hand on
the walk signal across the street becomes a white walking man, and
then one is rather inclined to make the crossing across the street
with as much haste as possible. One who crosses University Avenue
does not look up at the vehicles but rather down at the road, where
one notices the thousands of narrow grooves in the pavement and hears
their own hurried footsteps and breathing to the backdrop of so many
growling, hissing cars waiting to charge the minute the light changes
colors and you are conveniently out of their way. And once safely
across, you do not care to look back or, depending on what's in your
day planner, even think of going back ever again until the scanty
food that one has packed to take to campus has run out and one's
wallet is depressingly empty and it is deemed necessary to brave the
perils of the marginally treacherous road in order to reach home,
food, and safety once again.
