Rut 2 Something I've Never Done - Ashley Boehme

I had a couple good ideas of things I could do for this assignment.  I thought about riding the bus to Springville and taking an undraped figure drawing class, which I've considered doing but have always been a little shy about.  When that didn't pan out, I also thought about giving a stranger my number, like, for instance, the cute guy sitting across from me in the library.  In the end though, I chickened out.  I know some people that probably wouldn't have hesitated to do either of these things.  I guess that means that I'm not a very daring person. I dunno.

What I actually did is gonna sound totally creepy—hey, my list of things I haven't done before (that I could do in Provo) is pretty short.  I decided to pick someone on campus, follow them for thirty minutes, and see where they took me.  I thought this might be playing it easy for the assignment (I wouldn't actually be doing very much besides walking), but this activity made me think about things I've never really thought before.  

First of all, following someone is really fun.  You don't know where you're going, so it becomes a mystery of what's going on in the other person's mind.  This is pretty exciting.  Even though I knew I was just following a normal person that wasn't going to do anything mind boggling, it was still interesting to make guesses about who they were, where they were going, and what they were thinking.  Also, the whole thing felt veeeeeerrry creepy.  I justified what I was doing by saying it was for the class, and that I wasn't a crazy person, but I totally felt like a crazy person.  I mean, I would definitely hate it if someone was doing to me what I did to this poor person.  People don't expect to have their every action scrutinized by strangers when they leave the house.  It was different than just people watching, because I singled this one person in particular out.  I was also surprised by how easy it was.  I mean, people could be following me all the time and I wouldn't even know it.  I also felt creepily proud that no one knew what I was doing.  I felt like the only person who had an ulterior motive for being where I was.

In the end, though, it was a really interesting experience.  I actually did think about things a different way afterwards, and I was glad I did it, event though I still feel a little weird about it.  I don't really know how to feel about myself.  Like I said, I still had fun, even though I had a hard time shaking the feeling that I was doing something... strange.  I'd be interested to hear if other people have had an experience like this, and how they feel about it.