Are We Attention Seekers?

I’m starting to wonder if this is the case. I don’t think Karlo and I thrive on attention. In fact, in general we are hermits. We prefer to do our own thing and live far away from neighbors. So why is it that we always seem to attract so much attention? For instance . . .

We ride a rather unusual bicycle. Many people have never even seen a rig like ours (especially with my super funky softride beam). So without fail, every time we go out on it, some joker has to yell “Hey, she’s not pedaling back there.” If I had a dollar for every time that happened we could buy another bike! It might have been funny the first dozen times, but it’s getting old. We even had some guy start belting out the tune “ . . on a bicycle built for two . . .” But on a brighter note, we often bring smiles to people’s faces as they see us go by and the occasional kid screams out “Cool. Look at that!!!”


Then there are our dogs. For some reason I had to pick a rare breed that EVERYONE needs to comment on or question. Trust me, you can not walk around in public with a greyhound without drawing lots of attention. Normally we are used to walking in the woods (where there are no people), but lately we’ve been walking around the golf course. It is impossible to get around the park without comments like “Hey, I bet on that dog.” Or a million questions about the breed, and did we rescue them, and are they good pets . . . the list goes on and on. It takes us forever to take a walk because half the time we are discussing the dogs with strangers. I can’t remember the last time we walked by people that did NOT gawk at our dogs. Golfers stop their game to watch us go by. It’s like we are freaks!


And now we own a rather strange house. We get a lot of questions like “Why are you moving to Eastford?” and the answer to that question always relates to the post & beam issue. Most people don’t even know what a post & beam house is. So that requires an explanation of what it is. I’m getting sick of explaining what post & beam is!

And also on the subject of explaining . . . it seems we take unusual vacations too. Most people, when asked where they are going on vacation, can simply state: to the Cape, or to Disney, or some other normal place and be done with it. But our vacations require lots of questions and explanations . . . “Why would you want to bike across the state of NY? Where is Croatia? Why are you going there? Is there still fighting there? Is it dangerous?” I know people are curious about the unknown and it’s fun to explain ourselves . . . the first 20 times. But now we are sounding like broken records. I feel like we should just print up a statement explaining why we picked Croatia and keep them handy for the next person that asks where we are going on vacation. We can just whip out a “Frequently Asked Questions” sheet about Croatia. For that matter, we should make them about greyhounds too.

And just to add a few more things that draw attention . . . our tandem kayak always gets a comment on the lake. Our old Jeep was a huge attention getter – especially if the hood was up. That thing could attract every man from a 1 mile radius – to drool over the engine rebuild that Karlo did. We used to drive very strange scooters that nobody every saw and they just had to stop and ask about.

I’m not sure, but I think we have a problem. Maybe the mere fact that we want to get away from people simply draws them to us!