Watch Your Six

The phrase comes from clock language. Twelve in front, six behind. Useful, because the human animal is built to look forward and assume the rest of the world has the decency to stay where it can be seen. It does not.

When you work alone — and most of us, in the end, work alone — there is no second pair of eyes. No partner clearing the room you just left. The space from one hip to the other, directly behind you, is the part of the world you have decided to trust. That trust is usually fine. The one time it is not fine is the time that matters.

The amateur tell

You can spot the man who just discovered all this. He swivels. Head on a stick, checking over his shoulder every fifteen seconds, broadcasting to anyone watching that he is frightened and untrained. He has confused awareness with anxiety. They are opposites. Anxiety is loud and constant and gives you away. Awareness is quiet and gives you nothing.

The skill is not looking behind you. The skill is knowing what is behind you without anyone noticing you looked.

How it is actually done

You do not turn to check your six. You let the world hand it to you. A shop window is a mirror. So is a parked car, a phone screen tilted just so, the glass of a bus shelter, the polished side of an espresso machine in a bar in REDACTED where I once spent a useful forty minutes watching a doorway I was facing away from.

You build the checks into things you would do anyway. You stop to light a cigarette and the lighter cups your hand while your eyes go where they need to go. You cross the street — a real reason to look both ways, and one of those ways is back. You pause at a corner before you take it, because only a fool walks fast into a place he cannot see. Each of these is natural. None of them reads as fear.

A short list, then, for the times you cannot improvise:

• Moving. Vary your pace and your route. Predictable is the same as blind.
• Stopped. Before you give the front your full attention, give the back a glance. Tunnel vision is how people walk into things.
• Turning. Look before, confirm after. The turn itself is your cover.
• Entering. Clear behind you before you commit to going forward. Always know the way out before you take the way in.

The discipline

The hard part is not the technique. It is doing it on a Tuesday when nothing is wrong and nothing has been wrong for years. Complacency is not a moment of weakness; it is the slow erosion of a habit until the habit is gone. The clock does not stop because you got comfortable.

You are your only backup. Act like it, and you rarely need one.

Names changed, details moved, the lessons real.

— M.