Jay’s back online. He’s been on duty as a Deputy for about 6 weeks now, and has some observations about observation.

I’ve observed some unobservant behavior recently myself.

Was at a bookstore a couple of nights ago and there was some hipster guy walking around with his nose glued to his mobile phone. The entire time I was in the store and saw the guy, he was always glued to the phone (15 minutes? maybe more). He was holding the phone up such that it forced his eyes on a more horizontal plane than on a diagonal downwards to the ground, but yet he walked around constantly with the phone in front of him and his eyes more focused on the phone than anything else. He was able to notice things better than someone whose focal plane was aimed downward, but yet I could still see his walking wasn’t steady nor decisive. He might have noticed that giant bookshelf in front of him, but barely. I was tempted to walk up to him and constantly get in his way to see just how badly his “condition white” was, but I was out with the family and figured the guy would have caused a scene… since he’s engaging in his behavior, he doesn’t find that behavior to be wrong, so my pointing it out to him would only put him on the defensive and then I become the asshole. I didn’t need the grief. Besides, sooner or later he’ll fall into a fountain and hopefully learn a lesson on his own.

I was in the drive-thru at a bank. The woman in the lane next to me finished and she pulled forward into the open parking lot. I saw her park her large SUV, get out — leaving her driver’s door wide open (and car running) — and go around the back of the vehicle to the rear passenger-side door. She opened it and proceeded to do something for a few minutes, my guess is there was a child back there in a car seat that needed tending to. So now, her car is running, her driver’s door is open, and she’s on the complete other side of the car. She can’t clearly see anything on the driver’s side of the car, her attention is focused on the child that’s strapped into the car seat… and here I see some strange man walking through the parking lot. There’s no way she can see this man, and he’s walking in a direction that puts me into condition orange: he’s going towards her open driver’s door. I’m formulating a plan of action, then I see the man continue past the car. A minute later the woman closes the rear door, walks back around the car, into the driver’s seat, and off she goes.

I just kept thinking how someone could jump into that car and drive off… who cares about the car, it’s about the child in the back seat.

No, I’m not perfect myself. We are all guilty of slipping in and out of condition white. We just have to do our best to be vigilant and spend as much time ‘condition yellow’ as we can.