I was walking my dog once and a car was coming up the hill around a corner and a guy started yelling something out the window - not an uncommon thing along that road. I studiously ignored it, and thus didn't realize what he was saying until I rounded the corner and found myself in the middle of a dog v. deer showdown on the sidewalk.

(On both sides, it pretty much consisted of standing stock still and staring, but the dog could so easily have startled the deer out into traffic.)

in order to move more quickly

This is a big part of it -- I remember being explicitly told to do the keys-in-a-claw thing in college, and I don't do it anymore, but the whole idea of getting TO the car, INTO the car, LOCK the car, START the car, without stopping to fuck around or dig in my bag is completely internalized. It drives me bugfuck when S. wants to stop and chat with someone with the door hanging open in the parking lot on the way out of the gym -- even though by definition I'm not alone (and am on friendly territory and probably have some pretty serious bruisers right nearby).

And that's without any particular fear -- it's more like the mode I'm in on the strip. Ready to react to any little human movement.

Do you pronounce a "g"?

Doesn't Mal pronounce the "g" in Firefly? I seem to recall it as such. But I could be mistaken.

Wildfires, earthquakes, mudslides, torrential rains, big ass rocks. Tell me again about the attractions of living in Southern California.

It drives me bugfuck when S. wants to stop and chat with someone with the door hanging open in the parking lot on the way out of the gym -- even though by definition I'm not alone (and am on friendly territory and probably have some pretty serious bruisers right nearby).

And that's without any particular fear -- it's more like the mode I'm in on the strip. Ready to react to any little human movement.

YES. And he just doesn't understand it. I get this wounded, exasperated, "What?"

Pretty new topographic map of Australia

I do fumble in my bag, I realise. I am definitely not straight into the car. And I fumble the most leaving krav, because I usually need a parking ticket to get out, and I end up finding that before I sit down. There probably isn't anywhere safer, though, considering.

Tell me again about the attractions of living in Southern California.

I can't imagine enjoying living somewhere it wasn't worth living despite the weather. Made it through hellacious winters in Montreal for that reason, love Jamaica to pieces despite the earthquake/hurricane thing.

Can't quite characterise the area by torrential rains, though, otherwise it wouldn't be such a big deal.

No, I do have an awareness of people around me in public areas that the SO does not have. And he feels no compunction about just talking to random people on the street, and the reason I don't doesn't just have to do with being introverted, it also has to do with being female.

I'm so rushed and slammed at work that I'm not able to do more than intermittently lurk (hoping to have stuff to say later if the conversation hasn't drifted), but it occurred to me that I've known exactly two men with just this same awareness of others around them and wariness about speaking to strangers. Both of them are absurdly Nice Guys who look like threats -- both hit by massive growth spurts in puberty that turned them very tall and very large, and they've both talked about being aware of women's awareness of them from puberty on.

They put a lot of conscious effort into smiling but not holding eye contact, ducking, bowing, slouching, gauging whether any particular woman is going to be more comfortable going in or out of the elevator first or last, having the door held or not, being greeted or being ignored. They're acutely aware of their physical personae, and aware of how odd this awareness is, that it's a sort of freak funhouse mirror image of the hyper-awareness that most of the women in their lives go through the world with.

JZ, you just described Laura's DH, as well as several oversized--or physically "ugly"--men I know.

I can't imagine enjoying living somewhere it wasn't worth living despite the weather.

I suppose it's the enormity of the things that happen. As in OMG EARTHQUAKES! MUDSLIDES! Etc. that grab my freakish Midwestern sensibilities. We usually only get a bit of snow (some ice, too) and the odd tornado. Not much else.

The scenery isn't much, either. Having never lived outside the Midwest, what would I know?

Both of them are absurdly Nice Guys who look like threats

This is my ex-linebacker bud, right down to the hyperawareness of his own hyperawareness of his physically imposing self.