Walking down the paved cement sidewalk of North Virginia Street, I began to create an imaginary line between my safe zone and an unknown world. It seemed as though by crossing that fictional boundary, the landscape, the people, and the environment changed drastically. This eventually affected the paths in which I decided to take. Looking ahead, I scoped out which route might be the most safe or that I felt the most comfortable walking through. Mainly it included streets and sidewalks that did not obtain run down motels, houses, or had a number of people fixating their attention at those innocent people passing by, as if to weed out easy prey. Along this journey down the street, a realization hit me. Just as in the articles by Crestwell and Vergunst, the way in which a person determines their safe zone or comfort zone is due to their own biography of what they have encountered previously. I have never experienced a landscape such as that of Reno's, so in essence it was a completely new ball game. Not knowing how to react to certain situations if they had arisen, I attempted to take all the precautions possible by not trying to place myself smack dab in the middle of where I assumed something would be more likely to occur. Yes, this did include stereotyping a few people. One case in particular was a man with one pant leg rolled up, limping, his head drooping and mumbling to himself. Lifting up his head, he stared straight at me and looked me in the eyes. A sheer shutter of terror enveloped my whole body, making sure that he continued walking the other way.
Knowing now what surrounded me outside of my comfort zone really put me in check of my little exposure to the outside world and reality in my own hometown. Maybe by exploring some more around my new neighborhood for the next four years, that definitive border will expand or become eliminated altogether.
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