Walking Like An Assassin

This is not a how-to post. it is but a silent admission of the status quo of how I live my life.

I walk like an assassin — with minimal noise. There are many things I do to make my existence small and invisible, I think this is one of them and has spooked enough people by now that I thought to address it in a blogpost. I have had trouble sleeping at night and I often had the need to get up to pee or drink water. And my mum has been sensitive to sounds, lights and noises, so when at home, if I need to move around the night, I imagine myself to be Tom tiptoeing around the Spike’s doghouse. It’s funny and sad.

I have often walked up to friends in the kitchen and made an inane comment or remark, like, “oh this is how you chop the brinjal” and they have often been startled or gulped down a “Whoaa”. With one friend, it happened so often, we agreed on me doing comms around and calling from far “hey…I coming to the kitchen”. The only reference I have for such explicit communication is from Flatland by Edwin Abbot, where women have to keep on declaring their presence and position with a sort of Peace-cry. More context on that, all women are straight lines and look like a point from another direction, so it’s easy to get hurt or killed. So they have a separate entrance and and have to keep talking all day.

One of the side effects, of this invisibleness is, people often tend to step on my toes because they don’t realise I am right behind them. No, I didn’t sneak up on them, I just walked up to them, deep sighs. And then I am dealing with second order effects of keeping enough distance between the person I walked up to, it is tragic honestly. If I were to wave and greet, and make my presence known, it’d be much easier.

I don’t recommend doing it but if you ever end up being in position like this, your partner or friend is sick and you don’t want to disturb their sleep, here are some reference pointers:

• if jumping, always land on your toes, it makes less noise.
• when getting up from bed or cot, especially if it creaks, get up laterally, by that I mean don’t put the entire pressure on a single point. If it’s a low floor bed, I just roll off the bed on all fours. And then stand on the floor.
• if you are lying back down in the bed, it’s the same try sliding in laterally, there’s less depression formed and won’t alarm the sleeping person.

Ciao,
Calra