The way I walk (3 november, 2009)

From the way I walk you might get the idea that I grew up in a dangerous place. Every few feet I turn around and look behind me, as if to check if someone was following me. The story behind this is far more boring than it could have been. I wish it was exciting and involved secret codes and mysteries and espionage, but at that time I was not involved in anything remotely of that sort. No one would have any interest in following me. People who know my family and me might assume that it was one (or a few) of my brothers who had scared me. Although that is not a bad assumption, in this particular case it’s a false one; my brothers had nothing to do with it. Before that day I had no worries when I walked. I simply walked, one foot in front of the other. Most of the time it was quite a delightful experience. Especially when I was on my way to my best friend, who lived only a block away. All I had to do was to step out of our front door, turn right when leaving our entrance, walk past the rest of our apartment building, cross a street (there were no cars allowed on this street, so my mom never had to worry) walk over the grass where you weren’t supposed to walk but everyone walked anyway cause it was faster, and then walk up the two stairs to her floor and ring the bell. She and her brother and her parents lived in the apartment to the left, her grandma lived in the one in the middle and a family I didn’t know lived in the one to the right. I never paid attention to that one, but at first the other two gave me trouble – their signs both read the same last name. At first I would always confuse myself in my own logic in trying to figure out who lived in which apartment. Sometimes I stood there for quite a while, hoping that my friend would randomly open the door and find me there, and I would laugh and pretend I just got there. After a while I came up with a strategy that made sure I never had to enter her grandma’s funny smelling apartment again. I realized that while her grandma’s door was all wood, the bottom part of my friend’s front door had a metal cover. Problem solved. Once I learned to remember which door was which.
It was right in front of that door I was forced to seriously reconsider the way I walked. Of all the hundred times I walked there, this one time was different. I did not notice it until I was walking up the first steps to get to the second floor; there were more sounds of footsteps than my own. As I turned around to face the origin of these extra steps I found myself standing face to face to a girl from our neighborhood who was a few years older than me. She stood there smiling, looking at me. For a second or two I just stared at her, wondering what she was doing there, who she knew who lived there, why she didn’t say anything and why she smiled like that. At last I was able to put my confused thoughts into words and asked her if she had a friend there to. She said no and kept smiling, as I started to feel a bit uneasy, trying to find any other reasons she could have to be there. After an awkward moment she said that she had come out of my building right after me, and since I didn’t notice her right away she decided to follow me to see how long it would take for me to notice her. She seemed to think it extremely funny that she had walked right behind me the whole time. I did not. That is the simple reason to why I turn around every few seconds when I walk. It has nothing to do with fear or any sort of actual danger, but simply me not wanting to be laughed at.