The One Intersection Where I Can’t Jaywalk: My 13th Reason

By Grace Whinnery | Photo by Lizzy Morearty

It’s 8:32 AM on a Monday. I’m walking down Comm Ave after a weekend where I was sick for one day and high for two. I have done zero assignments and definitely not the so-called “readings.” I woke up late with crusty eyes and an overall feeling of filth and degeneracy. I have not touched a vegetable since August.

Life is misery.

But as I walk outside I feel a crisp autumn breeze. The birds are chirping, the leaves are gorgeous reds and oranges, the Allston rats and pigeons aren’t as aggressive as usual. I breathe in. And out.

I am a girl who is going to be okay. Physically I am walking to CAS but spiritually I am getting in my taxi and the driver asks “where to” and I reply “home <3.” I’m moving down the street at a swift pace, almost at a skip. Nothing can stop me now. I cross one street, then another, without a care in the world. Maybe, I think to myself, life on this beautiful, crazy planet is worth another day, and I just have to keep moving.

I am nearly struck by a car.

I stumble to a halt half an inch away from a driver who had the fucking nerve to actually drive when the light said they could, who then honks at me for 15 seconds straight. Whatever happened to pedestrians’ right of way? I can walk into traffic and you have to deal, that’s how that law works don’t look it up.

You know what? Fuck it. I’m ready to become a BU alert “traffic incident.” The five lanes of hell in the BU bridge intersection are my 13th reason. Taking away my freedom to jaywalk when I want, where I want is the last fucking straw. 

I almost failed my midterms. My major isn’t recession proof. Hell, I dropped my Brita pitcher and the handle snapped off and now when I carry it I have to clutch it to my chest like it’s the only thing between me and this cruel world. 

As I wait at the intersection for ten million years my bones decay and crumble, my muscles atrophy, my airpods die. The ice in my coffee melts and it was $8 because the economy is fucked and we’re all fucked and now my coffee is watery and fucked.

I don’t even go to class. I lay down on the ground and wish for deliverance. “MOVE BITCH,” they say. Would that I could—from this plane of existence.

Jaywalking means liberty. And give me liberty or give me death.