Make Way For Me

We often have ducks wandering throughout our neighborhood. They breed, hang around, disappear for a time, and leave a mess on my driveway. Because they have been around here forever, they have become a very familiar part of the landscape. I’ve gotten to know a lot about the way that they live throughout each season. One even set up a nest against the front wall of my house once.

One of the things that I have noticed about the ducks over the years involves the way in which they cross streets. Do you remember the old adage “look both ways before you cross the street”? Yeah, they’ve never heard that one. The ducks around here cross streets, regardless of the amount of lanes or the speed at which people are driving, all with a casual sense of privilege that rivals Yankees’ fans in October. They casually strut across the road, seemingly without a single care, at a speed that leaves you wondering if they have bothered to notice the 4-ton vehicles coming straight at them. I believe that I know why they do this. It’s simply a matter of experience. They have learned that drivers will always slow down and stop. They know that most of us show a concern for their safety and don’t dare to just plow through them on the road. It’s called behavioral conditioning, and we learned a great deal about it through the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.

I once thought that some of the injuries that I sustained as a result of the motorcycle accident would cause enormous problems for me in my daily functions. At first, I would show a great deal of caution in my physical movements and activities. That has very much changed with time. I now do almost everything that a given day requires, and I do most things with far less fear of my body’s response. A week or two ago a cart that I was working with started to roll down my driveway toward a neighbor’s car and I trotted after it with reckless abandon as though there was nothing wrong with my leg. I can’t really run, but I would win an Olympic medal in trotting if it were a genuine competition sport. Uh huh.

The thing is that time has become an ally to me in this area. I’m still cautious to an extent, but time has taught me that I’m not quite so “broken”. It has taught me that I should go ahead and live my life with every activity and function available to me. As a result, I am thankful that time has taught me to go ahead and do ‘stuff”, because a life of observation without daring or activity is a life without the ability to properly observe, learn, and enjoy.