Alien Observation

My favourite time to walk along the water is before 8:00 a.m. Mornings are better than afternoons or evenings; if I’m enjoying a flânerie after 8:00, I become an obstacle for joggers on iPods, joggers pushing baby strollers, joggers with big dogs, joggers in pairs, joggers in groups—you get the idea.

Last Friday, the sky over the ocean was so dramatic that I chose to walk home along the cliffs and marvel at the majestic light piercing the clouds. You’d think the prevailing sound would be the surf rolling or the wind singing through my earrings, but more constant than the rhythm of Nature breathing was the staccato “pound pound pound” of rubber hitting asphalt and the accompanying “huff huff huff” of a cardio system under duress.

I wanted to scream at them: “Stop and look at this picture, you idiots; this light on those mountains will never come again!”

It’s kind of annoying to feel like I’m poking along the pedestrian highway and that I should get out of their way, but I get irked when they blow past me, too. The thought occurred that if I was an alien who’d just beamed down from the mothership, I would immediately assume that earthlings run everywhere … and I’d be sorry for the poor beasts.