To Dance the Suburban Surrender

Suburbia is a strange and challenging environment with many ecological niches. The one of interest today is the local anomaly. That person who appears regularly on the street scape of ever suburb across the world. That person whose presents can not be ignored, not because of lairy or loud behaviour, but by a more intangible uniqueness.

Weirdo is too strong a term. These people, who are mostly harmless, only make their presents felt by there constant odd) and consistent appearance. I am not talking about the local who has decided to get fit and dons the Nikes or the old couple who walk the dog every day (although they can make the transition) or even the pretty young lady who walks past every day to the bus stop. Most I suspect are the victims of some aliment (physical or mental) and should not be the subject of any derision.

I am referring to those individuals who, like clockwork, make there way down the street at a given time each day. But they are more than that. They usually have some mark that makes them individuals, some characteristic that makes them stand out in the foot traffic. They are persistent, not a flash in the pan and every one in the street knows them.

Slow boy

At my current address there is this tall thin young man who walks by very slowly and deliberately with his head bowed. Every evening at about 5:30 he makes his progress along the verges on my side of the street. There is a foot path on the other side but for some reason he treks the verges. I first noticed his solemn trudge while he was still at school or university when the walk past was a bit earlier. Now his walk often coincides with my arrival home. I see him at various stages of his progress down the street. All ways the same gate, always the same beaten pose.

Over the years I have smiled and waved to him but I suspect his internal conversation hold his attention. I know where he lives and even a little about him. His house is close enough to mine that the ebb and flow of gossip along the street brings the occasional bits of information. I was not remotely surprised to learn he lives with an aunt and works in IT. I guess I would have preferred he remained just an anomalous figure in the street. The aesthetic of his street art was spoiled by too much information.

Skeletal Lady

In the last street I lived the human land mark was ‘Skeletal Lady’. Again a slow walker but this time more delicate and shuffling than a trudge. She always carried a bag, I think it was one of those woven grass types, and wore a floppy oversized hat. She was painfully thin. Most times she wore long sleeves but on occasion she would be wearing something more revealing. The degree of her emaciation would rival anything you have seen on those German concentration camp films from WW2.

Her progress down the street was always slow and her age was indeterminable, somewhere between 30 and 60, but very old for her age. As with slow boy, and most people I see regularly in the street, I smile or gesture. One time when I was working at the front of the house, she walked past, I smiled and gestured. She stopped and spoke with me for a while. The spell was broken, mystery revealed and she was a person.

Bent Lady

One of my friends who lives a few blocks away has never heard of, or seen, Slow Boy but he has Bent Lady. A slow moving elderly woman who drags one of those old two wheel shopping bags in her wake. He dubbed her bent lady for obvious reasons and with great detail explained the angle of her spine and the painful slowness of her shuffle. He was amazed that I had never seen her. He assured me she is just as much a part of his street as Slow Boy is, or Skeleton Lady was, of mine.

His spell was also broken. One day he saw Bent Lady out of his front window in obvious distress. It had started raining and she was stalled. His caring nature took over and he was out the door to her aid. He asked her if she needed a lift, and in very poor English she accepted his kind offer. After some effort she was in the car and they were of. He asked her address but her command of English was not up to delivering the directions.

And so after much hand gesturing and a few runs up and down the local secondary highway she was delivered home. He told me of the poor state of her house and that she offered him a cup of tea, which he accepted. It turns out she had lived in the same house for 30 or 40 years. Her children were all busy elsewhere and she had no one to take care of her in these final years. All of a sudden the living land mark became a human, a person in need, no mystery remained.

I love these people. Their slow and deliberate progress (or lack of it) marking the time of day by their appearance. I believe if I could transport myself 50 years into the future there would be a tall, thin slow moving old man walking past my place at 5:30. They are part of the greater thing of suburbia. But, like so much in life, the spell can be broken by too much knowledge. Celebrate these suburban celebrities but don’t ask too many questions. It will spoil the performance.

May be, perhaps, if you are so afflicted you to might find a never ending groove and succumb to the long slow dance of the suburban surrender.