It happens now, all the time. It doesn’t matter where I am, whether I am walking down a sidewalk, sitting in a classroom, eating in a restaurant, or idling in my car at a stoplight, I still do it.
I can’t help it.
My eyes move of their own accord. They traverse from side to side, up and down. My head submits to their curiosity and tilts or turns to make visible that awkward angle; it shifts a centimeter to discern the source of that teasing movement which hides in the blurry recesses of my peripheral vision.
I do this “watching” constantly and unconsciously, and I’m afraid it may be the advent of a problem.
I can imagine myself, or rather “see” myself, at a gathering of addicts. The alcoholic sits to my right, the drug addict to my left, and across from me is the chocoholic, the nicotine fiend, the workaholic, and the virtual addict. And then, dispersed throughout the room are the adrenaline junkies, the caffeine crazies, the overeaters, the perfectionists, the religious nuts, the sex addicts, the shopping addicts, the pill poppers, the pyromaniacs, the bulimics, and then there is me, observing them all... the people watcher.
Hello, my name’s Bekah, and I’m addicted to watching others.
I’m not crazy. At least, I don’t think I am. I guess if I was I wouldn’t know, so let me say that at the very least I don’t think I’m crazy. My motives for watching these people are not so that I can do them harm or interfere with their lives. Quite the contrary. I don’t want anything to do with them.
I don’t want to talk to them and I don’t want them to talk to me. I’m not watching because I want to make friends or because I want to pick up some handsome stranger. My looking occurs to achieve only one end, and that’s entertainment.
The thing is, I am an extremely visual person. I swallow colors, eat up landscapes, nibble on architecture, and imbibe art. But these things, for the most part, are stationary. They, unlike people, are capable only of choreographed movements. They are predictable. They follow a pattern. People, however, while they usually they stick to a particular routine or plan, can, on occasion, surprise you. And sometimes, they are just plain amusing.
Perhaps I like chaos. Or maybe I like the idea of infinite variations and possibilities. Some people like rules. Some people like numbers. They take comfort in knowing that certain integers, when acted upon or employed in particular ways, have predictable outcomes when used in a formula. They know that when you square a particular number, that the solution will always be the same. It will never change. They know that if you add, subtract, divide, or multiply two or more numbers, as long as they are the same numbers, that they are always going to have the same outcomes.
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