Photo by LisetteBrodey, Pixabay
… The French for “Afterthought” or “Why in the name of God didn’t I think of that while I was still there?”
We’ve all had that experience, at least when we were interacting face to face: a stranger says something with which you disagree, or confronts you in some way, and you remain dumb or mutter something inconsequential. Later, as you “go down the stairs” (in the French version) you think of something blazingly brilliant you could have said in response, but it’s too late. You’re not going back. In short, “L’esprit de L’escalier.”
I’m as prone to over-react as everyone is in this problematic time. Masks make it hard to hear at times and seem to stretch the distance between us—and masks are essential. I was wearing mine a few hot evenings ago when I took my beloved black pit bull, Pip, for the neighborhood walk he insists on, even in the heat.
We took our usual shortcut through an open field where an old house used to stand; it has been demolished and construction equipment testify that a new, larger and more pretentious house will soon rear its bulk there. But meantime, it’s a rare open space where I can let Pip off the leash for a few minutes of nosing, smelling and darting.
I put him on the leash again as we approached a house that has always seemed to be empty, like many of the big houses in Santa Fe, now that the second house people are not coming (second house because I don’t believe anyone can have more than one home). There was a knot of people in front of the house and I said hello, as I always do, and passed about ten feet away.
A small man, mad as a hornet, rushed out and accosted me. “This is private property! There’s a big no trespassing sign!”
I tried to explain that I was a neighbor—neighbors sometimes walk across each other’s property—but the hornet would have none of it. As I walked on, I noticed that the other people standing around in silence were all younger women, with the exception of a young man strapped to a baby. And I remembered hornet-like buzzing a few minutes earlier, apparently addressed at a wife.
Well, there it is. As we all grow more isolated, we may all begin to feel more threatened by anything that breaks that isolation, even a woman walking a dog. And when there’s a hornet-man in the midst of a group of women, with the only other male a younger man strapped to a baby, no one is going to counter the hornet’s buzzing.
Maybe one day when that baby grows up and walks on her own feet, she will.
And—there was no NO TRESPASSING SIGN.
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