The Politics of "Morning"

Each morning during our 2 week stay on Balboa Island I would rise early and jog around the boardwalk which circled the island.


And each morning I passed any number of people out on the boardwalk. Dog walkers. Coffee getters. Young mothers with a small child that woke up early. Girlfriends chatting. Old men. East Coast visitors that were awake and didn't know what else to do.

As you can see from the above picture the boardwalk isn't all that wide and it is only about 2 1/2 miles around. So if you do several laps you are going to see some of the same people over and over.

As I would encounter someone coming the other direction I had a couple of choices. I could try and avoid eye contact, which takes some thought and effort, I could look at them but not say anything, also awkward to do over and over, or I could acknowledge them in some way.

So I decided to try and say "morning" to everyone.

Soon it became a game. Especially the ones who avoided eye contact with me. I would remember them and the next time I passed them I would do something, like veer towards them, to see if they would look at me so I could say "morning".

There are some crusty people out there who just don't want any human interaction in the morning. I eventually got most people to respond. But there were a couple of folks who I saw every morning and they never once looked at me.

Somewhere out there is another blog that has a post that goes something like this:

"Our Visit to Balboa Island"

Every morning I tried to take a walk and enjoy the peace and quiet. But I was hounded by some "special needs" man who ran around waving and saying "morning" to everyone. The West Coast can be so annoying.