Allow me to introduce myself and this column.

I am Jennifer Dooper, columnist and two-time public sex witness.

And this is my column, Bumper to Bumper, inspired by said witness experiences.

See where I’m going?

For the kind souls who have kept up with my public musings since these first lines a year ago, you may remember what sparked my urge to begin writing this column (giggling allowed here). For those of you who may not have read it, what happened was this: My friend and I nearly crashed into two folks doing it doggy-style in a park path while riding our bikes, and I thought the event to be funny enough to share in this newspaper.

The looks on their faces! As they yanked up their pants and looked up with a glare that seemed to say, “What are you doing on this path?” as if we had misread the signs. We just laughed at them and turned around, thankful that it was us who stumbled upon them and not the two young boys pedaling behind us.

And so this column was born, the child of two horny people on a Sunday afternoon in a public park (if only all conception stories could be as colorful).

Originally, I had every intention to describe bumper-to-bumper situations like this one in all my columns, connecting them to the conflicting nature of human experience. The disappointing — and fortunate — thing about this, however, was that stumbling upon topics wasn’t always so fortuitous as the bike path incident. And I wasn’t about to start asking people to perform, so I had to start thinking of other things to write about.

And that’s when I started to seriously learn about myself.

You see, I couldn’t rely on people doing stupid things to fill up 500 words each week. Somehow I had to distinguish between what was asking for attention and what needed my attention. This was not easy, of course, because there were many nights in which the only things that needed my attention were wine, my boyfriend and my bed (not necessarily in that order).

But I found things I cared to write about soon enough, things that made me shake with nervousness for fear of misrepresenting myself, which is always a possibility when words are the medium. I celebrated Obama’s election, scorned Subway bags, got angry at men in trucks, questioned skimpy costumes, exploded at butt-grabbing efforts in bars, asserted that our campus needed a playground, judged people who judged (something to do with me wearing a bandana) and tried my best to commemorate my friend Farhat, who passed away this semester.

On these pages I discovered myself, or at least parts of me. And I want to thank you, readers, for giving me that chance. I’m not going to be writing this column next semester so that I can have more time for other things, but I’ve enjoyed every bumper-to-bumper moment I’ve shared with you.

If you’ll allow me now, I would like to re-introduce myself: I am Jennifer Dooper, former columnist, and these have been my thoughts, inspired by you and this world we live in. It’s just time for me to see where I’m going.