One thing I harp about over and over and over again until people want to shake me to death (this method isn’t very effective: I may be child-size but I have adult-strength bones and organs) is courtesy. Basic manners. RSVPs. Thank you notes. ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ in general. Being a good guest. Being a good host. Holding doors and not spitting or scratching yourself in public. Not cutting in line or being an asshole to people in service-industry jobs. Not ignoring someone who is disabled who obviously needs assistance carrying a bag or opening a door. Respecting the property of others. Not shouting things at people out of car windows. Not vomiting down someone’s heating vent or sticking your dick in the mashed potatoes.
I would like to add to this list: Yield to pedestrians.
I almost got creamed twice on my walk home yesterday, both times when I had the crosswalk light, both vehicles turning right. One simply didn’t look; I’m glad I was looking for him. The other made eye contact and then gunned his SUV so he could cross in front of me, nearly running over my foot. The fact that I injured my hand punching his rear quarter-panel is inconsequential if I didn’t actually damage the asshole’s vehicle, and thus doesn’t, in my mind, constitute a breach in my basic courtesy rules of conduct.
The day before, also as I was walking home, on the half-width sidewalk on the bridge over highway 167, over the music on my headphones, I heard someone screaming “BEHIND YOU”. I looked back, and was faced with a split-second decision–a bicyclist was bearing down on me rapidly, and I had two options for getting out of his way: dive into traffic, or fling myself onto the blackberry-bramble-covered chain-link fence over the highway and pray it was as sturdy as it looked.
…As thorns scraped at my face and I clung desperately to the links and the cyclist blasted by, I was overwhelmed by the urge to jump down and kick him into traffic. I mean, I get it. I’m on foot and thus the low man on the totem pole. But I have a right to the streets and sidewalks, too. I shouldn’t have to play Real Life Consequences Frogger twice a day.
Shaking with adrenaline, I continued on my way home. The lady who drove right through a stop sign and almost hit me, half-braked and mouthed ‘sorry’ at me through the window barely got a reaction, by which I mean, I only flipped her the finger instead of launching into a profanity-laden tirade. ‘Sorry’ won’t count when you t-bone someone or flip me over your hood like so much roadkill, lady.
All I’m asking is not to be mown down in the street. Is that too much?
