One way, another

On denial

I can’t say I was calm when my cab driver stopped in the middle of the intersection to let the pigeons cross the road. They moved impossibly slowly, one after the other. A couple steps, then a couple more. Are they okay? he asked, watching them dawdle under the car. Can you see them both or just the one? It wasn’t clear to me why he thought my view would be any better than his own. But before I could respond, he started rattling off facts about the birds. Did you know pigeons close their eyes when they’re afraid? They think if they can’t see anything then no one can see them. For a moment, the idea of self-preserving pigeons was nice enough to keep me from panicking about the cars piling up behind us; the inevitably hostile Montreal drivers honking and yelling and crashing into us at any second. We sat and watched in silence as the first and second pigeon sauntered onto the sidewalk. When he went back to driving, I asked him how he knew what he knew, whether he’d studied biology. No, he said, I read it on Instagram. And it turned out his pigeon fact was, like most comforting thoughts, not entirely or even really a little bit true. Still, it reminded me of the times I’d found calm pretending something I’d known to be one way was actually another. So I closed my eyes and went on believing in the lie.