This may be the first time this has ever happened -- I've just made friends with someone I met by chance entirely on my own, without being introduced by someone I already know, without the benefit of living together, working together, having a class together, or anything else. I feel suddenly adult, as though being twenty-six, college-educated, and gainfully employed pales in comparison to being able to call up a near-stranger and have dinner and a beer and a nice conversation.
Today at work I was talking with one of the grad students in my department about how educating kids to be whole, healthy, confident adults equipped to handle the world and the other people in it is a lot harder than teaching them to add or spell or understand molecular bonding. So possibly the above comparison is spot-on.
I gave my new friend the last of my first batch of profane bicycle PSA stickers -- or technically the second batch, but the first ones tended to run in the rain and have been decommissioned until next summer. I've already invested in more sticker material and printed off another batch to carry around with me, and I'm starting to think of another design to put up simultaneously. They'll be smaller, and gold instead of silver, and designed for the lightpoles and newspaper boxes of the world instead of the bike racks. They will say,
(insert bike lane)
I'll make sure to put a few along the new transit mall they're building downtown -- the one where they've widened the sidewalks to 14 feet and dispensed with bike lanes entirely. Bikes, the planning website announces cheerfully, will be able to share two general-traffic lanes with the buses and cars and light rail trains! (I highly recommend clicking here and scrolling down to the "bike access" section.) So you see I might just wander over there and delicately leave a sticker or two.
Thousand.
Posted by dianna at October 17, 2007 11:01 PM