If you’re like me and you’ve had to walk say from PPHAC to Reeves, for instance, in the last two weeks and prefer not to walk in the road, you may have made a sudden and surprisingly close acquaintance with the sidewalk. By that I mean you tripped on the crack that sticks out on the sidewalk pavement. If you haven’t yet, consider yourself lucky … you will.

There is a small raised crack of sidewalk near the corner of the sidewalk. I’m not exactly sure when this raised crack showed up. I don’t remember it being there last semester. Maybe it’s just been raised higher over the summer and crossed some kind of threshold where it’s large enough to trip people. It is truly the exact size where it’s just small enough to miss in your peripheral vision but just large enough to trip over. 

I’m sure if it was there last semester, I would have remembered, but I could be wrong. Maybe the removal of the sidewalk on the opposite side made it more noticeable and it’s been there all along. I personally have tripped over this crack at least three times since returning to campus. 

I’ve heard stories from others about them tripping over it, and they didn’t seem to remember it being there either. When it showed up is a complete mystery to me, but it is here now, and it reeeeeeaaaaaaaalllly sucks. 

I don’t want to blame anyone for the crack having shown up or still being there. I’m sure it’s just an overgrown root. Facilities is on their game, so I’d be surprised if they aren’t planning on doing something about it. Don’t get me wrong: I have a lot of frustration right now, but it’s not at anyone but rather at the unseemly, loathsome crack itself. 

I hate this crack. For me, “What is this crack?” could be the answer to a Jeopardy clue in the category “Things I hate” for $1000. Right now I’m sitting in my home far away from the crack, enjoying a ham and cheese sandwich and it’s still not enough distance for me to think of words adequate to describe my frustration with this inanimate crack.

But I have to admit, in taking the time to reflect on the crack by writing this I’ve lost some momentum in my ranting. Maybe there’s a lesson to learn from the crack. Is it humility? It certainly is a humbling experience to walk around campus feeling very cool and confident before absolutely eating pavement in front of everyone. 

The lesson could be in mindfulness.

All three times I tripped I was walking mindlessly from one class to another only focused on the destination, what I might have to do when I got there, and what I might have to do after. But the trip brought me out of that, brought me painfully back into the outside world and the present moment; I started to feel the need to look at the pavement and look around me.

While I’ll admit it took me a couple of trips to arrive at this point, now I pass that spot more mindfully. I’m looking around me now, and perhaps not just for the bump. Maybe the raised sidewalk was never the enemy, maybe the real raised sidewalk was the friends we made along the way. 

I’m kidding really; I hate that crack, it suuuucks.