I Like Walking

This is going to sound like a Healthy Living! sidebar from the AARP magazine, but I honestly feel like we’d be a lot happier as people if we just walked everywhere.

Cars seemed like a good idea, but if you were to ask Karl Benz in 1896 whether he thought eventually killing 1.2 million people around the world every year was an awesome thing, he probably would say “Ja…no, zat is less zan awesome.” Actually, he would have said the rest of it in German and not a German accent. You understand.

I’ve already played the faux-Luddite in other posts. It’s older hat than the phrase “old hat,” so I won’t get into all of it again. But speaking as someone who lives on the left coast, specifically Southern California, there would be way worse things than not having cars.

In the old days, you must have actually had to interact with people on your way to wherever you were going. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have your own bubble in some ways. Listen to your own music, make your own decisions and not be at the mercy of a stalled train or psychotic bus driver, etc.

But there’s also something to be said for being thrust into other people’s space. It’s not always a bad thing to see how other people are living, for better or worse. A shared smile across the subway car has probably led to just as many marriages as stabbings. I miss getting off the subway in NY and walking to work. There was something a little more human about it.

When we’re stuck in our cars for our commutes, we turn into other people. Those people are never our better selves, they’re always our worst. We turn impatient, bossy, and even violent. We get so comfortable behind the wheel, we eventually think of the car as an extension of our bodies. Many people, including myself, take needlessly rude and even dangerous chances with the shell of this 2-ton vehicle that you should never think of taking with your own body. If we start thinking of the car as an extension of ourselves, then by default, we’re just becoming machines.

If two people were walking toward an escalator, and both got there at exactly the same time, there would often be a few seconds wasted as they requested that the other person advance to the steps first. Now switch the situation to a common highway merge, two lanes of traffic into one, and you have an all-out race to muscle your car into the wedge first, even though this would guarantee you would arrive at your destination about .2 seconds before your “opponent” in the other lane. Yes, there are nice people driving, and this sometimes translates to courteous behavior on the highways. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

Worse than the rude behavior in cars is this strange notion some rude people have after they pull an asshole move in their car that if they don’t look at you, you don’t exist. If you cut someone in line at the store, you would have to weigh the risk of having to face that person down and eventually look them in the eye, potentially enduring them dressing you down for being the rude asshole that you are. In cars, people often behave like a child, “If I don’t look at them, they don’t exist.” Similarly, you would thank that person who insisted you get on the escalator first, but in a car, the very common accepted practice of waving thanks for letting you into a lane is substituted for averting your eyes from that kind-hearted vehicle operator and feigning “keeping your eyes on the road” after you accept their waving you along.

Along the lines of dehumanizing, mankind was definitely supposed to run, walk and swim. I’m not a fitness guru, or practitioner, for that matter, but walking should make everyone feel more human. Maybe it’s how vast LA is, maybe it’s living in NY for so long and having walking be an acquired taste, but everyone should do it. And if you roll your eyes at the idea of “taking a walk,” then you’re not doing it enough.

I used to work for a studio in the valley, and during my lunchbreaks, I would take a walk for 45 minutes, then I’d be hungry for my lunch when I got back. The studio’s campus was nestled in a very residential neighborhood, and it made for a genuinely nice, long walk.

On more than five occasions, my fellow employees who drove by and recognized me walking would pull up beside me, roll down their window and ask me “What’s wrong?” I mean genuine concern. They’d ask me if my car was in the shop. I’d say no. They’d look around and ask me where I was walking. I’d say nowhere. They’d ask again if I was okay. I’d say “yeah, I just like walking.” Most of the people would just shrug and drive away at that point, but one of them actually kicked open their passenger door, chuckling as if I was telling an elaborate joke, and say “Okay. No, seriously, get in. I’ll take you back.”

Countdown to Nothing

Do we really need calendars? Most of the time, I'm fine with knowing what day it is, whether I'm close to the weekend, if there's a vacation coming up, if I've missed Mother's Day by four weeks.

But I've gotta say, there is no calendar day more lame than New Year's Eve. There doesn't seem to be any reason for celebrating this day other than the fact that we're happy that the earth has made it around the sun again. For 4,500,000,000 years, the earth has managed to make it, I don't think it needs our help anymore. Since it's pretty old, I don't think the earth even remembers what its birthday is. So can we dispense with this holiday altogether?

If the Chinese calendar is the correct New Year, and ours is way off, that would be a huge embarrassment in the first place. But heaping on all the other traditions on New Year's make me hate it even more. Let's review them all:

1) The Resolution. This barely needs mentioning, because it's so retarded. But we're honestly supposed to think we're going to change our ways for the better because it's a new calendar year? What person thinks like that? Name a doctor that says "Hey, you really should stop smoking, your heart could give out and you'll probably get cancer. Oh yeah, and January 1st is coming up, so there's that."

2) The Pressure to Do Something. I think my fondest memories of New Year's Eve come when I was about 7-11 years old. Back then, it was either a middle finger to the convention of making kids go to sleep earlier than they wanted to, or fighting my inner clock's bedtime and challenging myself to stay up and watch Dick Clark. That's about everybody's peak, I think. Now, there's this strange pressure to do something that night, like everyone is 22. I'd rather be home most of the time, why does this change for an arbitrary 1o seconds? Which brings us to...

3) The Countdown. In the grand cosmic scheme, what do these ten seconds matter? I once wondered if all our math was wrong, and the Gods on the Astral Plane just looked down at us and thought we were completely stupid, or a failed creation. "Len, these morons think 2 + 2 equals 4, why did we let them crawl out of the mud again?" Well, since when do we take credit for the year's birthday? If you think about it, our countdown counts down to nothing. It's a moment that doesn't actually exist, because as soon as it arrives, it's already the New Year. Yeah, confetti drops, Ryan Seacrest gets to tell us how amazing it all is, and Carrie Underwood claps her hands like a seal, but what does that moment really represent? I already have a depressing annual mortality reminder scorched into my memory, it's called my birthday. Do I really need another landmark to remind me of all the shit that I didn't do in my life? Since we've been looking around with blank faces after having counting down to zero for so long, we've now got another tradition piled on...

4) The New Year's Kiss. I like kissing my wife. She's a good kisser. Hell, if she wasn't, I probably would have married someone else. You end up kissing that person a lot, so choose the right one. Just a little romantic advice there. Anyway, the Pressure to Do Something is often conflated with the Pressure to Be Next To Someone You'd Like to Kiss on New Year's Eve. If you think about it, this tradition was born out of drunk people in the 19-aughts wanting an excuse to hook up. "Heck, I got to zero...Ethel was standing there...so I tugged on her bloomers and we started necking!" But what about those people who go to a party with a bunch of friends, all of whom happen to have a significant other or prostitute, and when the ball drops, they pretend to know the words to Auld Lang Syne and knock back their swinging champagne glass like they're going to the chair. We've all been that person. We already have a holiday where we have to be reminded that we're all alone, it's called Valentine's Day.

So that's enough complaining. I promise my next post will not be a complaint, but something I like. It is the New Year, after all, and that's my resolution: one post a month will not be a complaint.