Within the past week I've introduced a habit that seems a little weird. Well, not weird, really. Strange, a bit. It's odd, really. Or... anti-social. Not anti-social as in "I don't want to see anyone," leads to agoraphobia leads to fear than hatred than the dark-side of society (i.e., terrorism or reality television), but anti-social in the this is not what well-socialized people do. Yes. If there were etiquette classes available to young ladies such as I, I would have failed them faster than I failed accounting. Etiquette, like accounting, is something that seems like it would be an excellent way to devote one's time, but like accounting, is terrifically boring and not important for every day life. Still, I'm always impressed by people who know the rules well, but not well enough to know how to find loop-holes (for this reason I don't like lawyers... or anarchist's for that same reason).
So what's the big anti-social activity I've adopted as a perambulatory creature, becoming second nature, habitual, as I roam small cities from the West Coast best coast all the way to Boston? Touch. It's offensive to many people, public health directors who work for the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and WHO (World Health Organization), employing visual artists to create signs that strongly suggest against something that seems so very human. Unfortunately, if you contract H1N1 or whatever new blight qualifies under the "pestilence-designed-to-signify-Armageddon-for-the-un-rapturable," you are no longer afforded the same rights given to say, a newborn baby or a grandmother (both of these are examples of a type of person in society whom are often hugged or snuggled). In fact, you're not even considered human, rather, you've become a vector, like a mosquito carrying malaria or a paramecium carrying Montezuma's revenge. So as is a common warning threatened by the guards of the Orange County Prison: "No touching! No touching!"
However, I'm not sick. Nor am I attempting to touch sick people. I'm just... touching things. I think this first happened when I found myself at a Whole Food's in Boulder, Colorado. I was like a kid in a petting zoo where all the animals are 100% organic, vegan, or packaged in some form of hyper-stylized container. I'm a sucker for packaging, so easily am I swayed by aesthetics. Most of the new foods I've ever tried, I've tried because they've come in a cardboard box or glass bottle I just couldn't leave the store without. Color, contrast, font, minimalism. Combine that onto a glass bottle and it's in my hands. We spent a prolonged period of time in that Whole Food's, trying to make sure that we purchased everything just right for the woman of old money that my family friend now works for. In the lull's between, "How do you know if a nectarine is a peach or if either of them are good for purchase?" and "What is Chuanr-style lamb and is their cumin in it?", I would wander aisles and daydream about how fancy my future life would be with all my food items tasting as delicious as they looked on their boxes. *Sigh*
A week later, I'm in Boston. Not as clean as Boulder. It's hot. I can smell sewage wafting around unfortunate street intersections. Not as pleasant, no. But it's a very walkable city. And it's early summer (at least, as small talk will have you believe, it feels like it, since winter lasted wicked long in this part of the country, and pretty much everywhere else in this country, too). Flowers are in full bloom, that's what made me pick up my habit of touching things. Because a lot of my walking has involved passing residential areas, I have literally had a encyclopedic-worthy amount of inflorescence variety at a distance not exceeding my outstretched hand. But it didn't stop there. I wanted to touch leaves, too, the tubular off-shoots of bromeliads, airplants. Than bark. Trees line streets, but for what reason? Beauty? Aesthetics? But is not some part of aesthetics more than just appearance? How does the bark of an oak feel against a tentative palm's caress? Then it was the tips of fences, from heavily galvanized to suffering and rusty, protecting an area sectioned off by bureaucratic means, clearly, because no artist or homeowner would let even something so utilitarian fall into such visual offense*.
Soon it was the objects of public transportation, and here is where things get dirty. Hands. So many hands belonging to (on average) half as many people, use the subway, or "The T" to get from point A to point B. Now, etiquette dictates that many of those people will not touch everything that is touchable. They wouldn't want to. But etiquette isn't something we are necessarily born to follow. So while I may be touching things that very few people may touch, probability alone dictates that someone, too, must have, prior to my poking, touched what I was reaching out to touch. Little things like the overhead bars are objects of design that everyone ends up touching, to combat the awkward stance of passengers while cars de-accelerate, accelerate, de-accelerate, accelerate. But then, while riding the escalator up from the city's depths, I noticed small little circular, upraised chrome colored pegs that were just a little away from the large black strip that doubles as a hand-rail. What was their purpose for existence? I didn't care. I touched one. I touched the next. I continued as the escalator slowly dragged me closer to Porter Square. Advertisements and anything that glowed also became the fascinations of my hands, well, mostly just my right. It's a trouble maker, I'd think. How many diseases, coughs, sniffles, viruses would I pick up from letting my hand execute its own freedom as it saw fit?
*Get it? It's a pun! That fence is offensive!
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