MAKING WAVES

When I go for a jog along my street, I reckon about 55 to 60 percent of the residents wave at me from their cars as I shuffle past. But the problem is that when a car approaches, it’s hard to know if it contains wavers or non-wavers because pretty much everyone in my street drives a white Mazda CX3 or CX5. For a while, I tried to guess which Mazda had occupants who waved and which Mazda didn’t. But that just resulted in me waving to non-wavers and not waving to wavers. I made so many incorrect calls that by the end of a jog, I’d be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

So I resolved to just wave at everyone. 

The problem with that is rejection weighs heavily on me and waving at everyone involves a lot of rejection. At first, I was gutted by how many of my waves were left unanswered. But I kept waving. I was determined to keep my side of the street clean. And even though the percentage of return-waves never increased, I started to care less about them. And that in turn helped me care less about other rejections in my life. Maybe I was developing the emotional maturity most people developed at 12. Or maybe, just maybe, their hurtful unwillingness to lift a single finger off their steering wheel drained me of all the fucks I had to give.   

Next week, I’ll report back on who in my street reads thekicker.substack.com.