Walking Backwards

It’s a gloriously sunny day today. Great, and not so great. Great, because everything looks so much nicer in sunshine, and everyone’s happier. It’s proper sunshine too, not like those glary-cold days I remember from childhood. The ones where I tried to escape, even if only for a few minutes, out into the fresh air, only to be yanked back by Mother, with a comment of “I don’t care how sunny it is, you’re not going out there without a coat!” Dang it. She knew I wouldn’t want to put a coat on. I’d overheat within minutes. That was her trump card and she played it every time.

But sunshine… Ahhhh…. Even I love it. Oh yes! It makes people easier to be around. Not so much negative frequencies bouncing around. A small confession – I childishly love watching my shadow as I walk. Obviously I have to keep covered up (thinly – I’m a great believer in layers) because even cold sunshine will affect my skin (but I will risk it a bit for a spot of Vitamin D!) Plus, with the overall light being so bright, I tend to squint slightly (even with the special glasses working at almost full-on blackout setting), and that makes me look like I’m smiling. It cheers a lot of people up, who readily smile back.

Of course, there are the not so great things, like the people who pass me with my strange perma-smile and either suddenly take three steps out of the way or just recoil in horror. Either way, it’s great for getting through bustling crowds in town on market day (and you know how much I ‘love’ crowds… *sigh*). It speeds shopping up no end. Silver linings, and all that.

Naturally, on really, really, sunny days, even with the glasses, the light is extremely painful. Perma-smile quickly becomes grimace, especially when walking into the sun. So much so, that the other day, I had a couple of students accost me, because they thought I was grimacing at them. Egocentric, anybody? Oh yeah, boys, it’s all about you, isn’t it? This is on the top of my ‘to do’ list today: annoy you.

Here I am, clearly in a lot of pain, unable to see much of anything (my retinas have gone on strike by that point), desperately and delicately feeling my way along the wall to try and find my way home to recover and suddenly it’s all actually a personal slight against you.. Seriously, do some people spend their lives actively seeking out slights and persecution? You’d have loved the Spanish Inquisition…

Which nobody expects, of course. The Spanish Inquisition, that is.

Has anyone else found this? You regular humans, I mean? Hah, you see, I bet there’ll be somebody who’d get insulted by the phrase ‘regular human’! Let’s just set this out there, right now, on the record.

I mean no offence.

To anyone.

Ever.

Oh well. I’ve been alive long enough to realise that if you go looking for offence, you’ll find it. It’s kind of like dust. Unless you clean or turn a blind eye, you will see it everywhere.

 

 

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