Personal Peeves Part 2

Litter

How tough is it to keep your trash in your own car until you reach your destination? It takes very little thinking and even less effort. Set it aside. Keep a bag of grocery bags in your car if you have that much trash. Take your trash with you when you leave the car. There are trash cans everywhere. You won’t have it with you for very long.

Instead I see trash everywhere I go. The roads are a mess. Even the trails in the woods have napkins and beer cans where folks have had impromptu picnics. Cigarette butts are everywhere and chewing gum mars the sidewalks. Again, where did these people learn this behavior? How did they learn that this is okay? Whether it is just negligence or intentional vandalism, how could anyone become so irresponsible? I don’t understand it. I can’t understand it. I know there are bad people, but that doesn’t mean I understand them. It makes me angry.


Yielding

I am walking on the sidewalk and two women are coming toward me walking side by side. They fill the sidewalk. There is no space for me to get by without leaving the sidewalk. It has been raining and there is soggy mud on either side of the sidewalk. If I leave the sidewalk my shoes will be covered in mud and my socks are likely to be soaked with muddy water. Gross.

My fellow pedestrians seem to be unconcerned as the gap closes between us. Neither of us has a right to the entire sidewalk. Surely one of them will step in front of or behind the other and allow me to remain on the sidewalk. I cannot fathom what reasoning they are using. The most gracious story I can tell myself is that they are engrossed in their conversation and are unaware of the impending collision. I expect that they will go single file at the last second and allow me to pass.

No such thing happens. Enlightenment never crosses their faces. I dare not bump into them in the least lest it be construed as rude or assault. They bull straight at me in a game of pedestrian chicken. At the last second I am forced to twist my body sideways to avoid a collision. I walk a tightrope along the edge of the sidewalk. I flail my arms wildly to keep my balance and avoid falling into the mud. The ladies show no sign of recognizing what they have done to me.

The next time this happens I am wiser. Ten yards away from a potential collision I stop and hold still on the edge of the sidewalk with my arms down at my sides. If there is a collision they will be walking into me. I am standing still. I cannot be the offending party as I am doing nothing. If anything happens they will have walked into me, not me walking into them. At the last second they realize they are about to walk into a man who isn’t moving. The one who would have hit me head-on pauses for a moment to step behind her colleague, but while doing so gives me an ugly look as if I had violated some inalienable right she possesses.

It is such a small thing, but I’d like to use the sidewalk too, please. Is that so bad? Do we need to put dotted lines down the sidewalk to divide the traffic? I’d like to think all we need is some common courtesy, but courtesy doesn’t seem all that common anymore. The same could be said of common sense.

Would this be any different if I was running on the sidewalk?

Is doing the right thing all that difficult?


Can’t we all just get along?