Ask Mr. Etiquette

I've played hooky a couple of times this week from the gym I visit on weekday mornings trying to avoid some of the Southeast Connecticut summer (the heat and humidity give us something to complain about while we wait for winter's return so we can bitch about the show and icy temperatures). 

I've stolen half a page from our daughter Michelle's playbook and headed up to Mohegan Park in the center, practically, of Norwich, Connecticut, and walked around Spaulding Park in the seven o'clock hour before the heat (and humidity) of the day have joined forces to bully most of us indoors. 

The half a page I've stolen is the destination; Michelle runs along the trails in the park to get and stay fit. I, on the other hand, walk along the path surrounding Spaulding Pond, the swimming hole no one I've ever met admits to swimming in even though so many of us were outraged last summer when attempting to balance a municipal budget our City Council chose to not fund money for lifeguards, so the beach was closed. 

I have neither the legs nor the breath to attempt to run around Spaulding Pond and tell myself, Fitbit firmly attached to my right wrist, that I'm doing my body nearly as much good as if I ran. Between us, I couldn't run for even a short distance or anything approaching a sustained rate if someone was chasing me over a cliff. So, like many old people, I tell myself stories about how much better I was at that stuff when I was younger.  

Not suggesting cause and effect but this tree was upright Tuesday morning but by Thursday
was sprawled across half the lower parking lot blocking one of the entrances/exits. 

As I walk along the path, in a counter-clockwise direction because that's how I was taught to do it, I pass people coming in the opposite (a/k/a 'wrong') direction as they, too, make their way along the trail. I'm pretty good at waiting until we are separated by about eight-feet and closing fast, before making eye contact and saying a cheery 'good morning.' I invariably receive a head nod or a 'hello,' and sometimes the occasional 'how are you?' in return.

When it's the how are you, I always respond with 'quite well and thank you for asking,' because I do value courtesy and civility but don't want to end up going shoe-shopping with any of these folks and, besides, I don't ask how they are because I don't actually care. 

Of course, there are also concerns if those you encounter aren't singular in number (we all are in person, of course) and there's a slight little dance we all do to see who moves/yields so the other can continue to walk two abreast. Some mornings I'm almost exhausted from the etiquette and protocols involved in a simple walk, and still, I persist. I admire myself greatly at those times.   

That's on the first pass around one another. I strive to make four circuits around the pond (I'm channeling my Inner Brit there) and still haven't quite mastered the what do we do to/with one another on each subsequent orbit. Sometimes I briefly nod or smile, sometimes the other person does or one of us struggles with our phone/iPod/music player thingie and don't acknowledge the other in any way so that we don't get trapped in an endless do-loop of salutations and greetings. 

I won't even mention the etiquette concerns I (at least) have about passing someone going in the same direction but even more slowly (I meant carefully). It's strange on a planet rapidly approaching eight billion of us wandering in every direction how hard we work to stay out of one another's way.   
-bill kenny