Walking home.

I took a different route home from work yesterday. I didn't want to, but I did.

The day before, a kid who looked like he was barely 20 leaned out of his car and started harassing me. I don’t even know what he said, but the car slowed and I felt distinctly not safe being there alone with him. Broad daylight. Two blocks from my house.

Maybe people think this isn’t a real problem. Certainly FOXNews doesn't want you to think it is. But it’s something I’ve dealt with since I was in college, maybe before—the drop in the pit of my stomach when a strange man turns his attention to me on the street. Honking horns. Chht chhting at me as I cross the street. It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing a ten-year-old jean jacket and no makeup. From now on though, when I wear those pants, I will wonder. Are they too tight? Is this skirt going to fly up? Am I safe?

There is an alley that runs along a school. It is cool and dark and right now it is green. Certainly, if I were a kid, I would think it was my own secret passage way, but really all sorts of people walk through the alley. Moms with babies. Guys with dogs. High school kids on the way home from school. That determined short kid who carries his French horn to school every day.  

After work, I usually walk through the part of my neighborhood that’s closest to the highway, zig zagging past the medley of low-rise affordable apartments dwarfed by four-story purple brick condos with tiny patches of front lawn. The people in the low-rises at least have side yards where kids play. I wave at an old man and his wife bouncing an infant on her lap. I always felt safe there, though I know the names of very few of my neighbors outside of our building (this does not include the weird community of people in our neighborhood Facebook group who post “fireworks or gun shots?!” every Saturday. Both, people. Both.).  I know a lot of people’s faces, though. The moms who stand on the corner and chat for a bit after their kids go to school. The guy who owns the corner store. The cook at the bar who stands inside the doorway of the kitchen to catch some air.

I reflectively put my hand in front of my face as it happened. No. Stop. He was too close, and I was too scared to even yell my typical, “not ok!” I looked the other way. It wasn’t, from a physical safety standpoint, probably the best decision. Closing my eyes. But isn’t that how we react when something violent is thrown at us?