As someone who doesn’t own a car, I’ve logged quite a few hours as a pedestrian. I’ll be one of the only parents in this generation who’ll still be ranting to his kids about having walked 2 miles to and from work every day, in the snow… odd that own parents never actually hit me with that one… As a career pedestrian I’ve got to say I find it incredibly annoying when people walk the same pace as me within a ten-foot radius. It’s incredibly awkward, especially when the two of you are going the same direction for more than two minutes.
These are the same clowns who, when they do drive, linger in other people’s blind spots on the highway, hanging back by your driver side passenger door for five minutes straight, perplexed to see that surprised look on your face when you try to change lanes and almost take out the front quarter panel on their Dodge Intrepid. You’re lucky I looked over my shoulder “Robert”, because you and baby Bobby there were about to eat some serious embankment. I don’t think car seats or baby chins are rated for SUV tires or concrete retaining walls, might want to be more alert.
I can’t stand people who walk like that, lockstep with you, like you two are executing the world’s loneliest march. Girls will do it while they’re ahead of you, and then suddenly look back at you like you were deliberately following them. Don’t shoot me that look sister! I didn’t ask you to walk this direction, at that pace. Can I help it that we work in the same building or that after a year and a half you still don’t recognize me?
I’m just as uncomfortable as you are in this whole “following” thing; probably more so because I’m a minority and if push comes to shove, no one will believe a word I say. No matter how correct my grammar is, I’m getting invited to “talk about it down at the station” and being told to “watch my head”. I wore a cream-colored golf shirt to work today. Cream, son. I looked in my closet this morning and said “Yep, that’s me. I’m a cream man today.” You think I’m cut out for being in a police station, even for a few hours? I don’t even have to walk in the door to start crying, just pulling up in a squad car will have me weeping like a three-year old. Cream-colored golf shirt. I looked in the mirror this morning as I was leaving, the Southeast in me wanted to beat myself up as a reflex
“Get that mutha!… oh wait, that’s me. Ooh, I should get beat up good today…”
Back to the original point, I get so irritated with people who walk the same pace as me inside of ten feet, it’s probably a little unreasonable. I’ll be honest, this morning I fantasized about suplexing people on the sidewalk. A running drop quick to the small of the back at the very least. Something where you’re going to have to relearn how to walk, maybe this time around you’ll learn to walk without being an ass.
Wouldn’t that be great? Temporarily maiming a perfect stranger, a perfectly annoying stranger, and as they’re crying out “why did you do that?” lean down and calmly whisper in their ear “please mind your surroundings” and just walk away as if nothing happened. If you’re calm enough while you walk away, no one’s going to believe you just suplexed a perfect stranger in broad daylight. Not while wearing a cream-colored golf shirt. It doesn’t matter how loud the guy yells. It doesn’t matter if the guy describes you and knows your mother’s maiden name. Even people who actually saw you suplex him wouldn’t believe the guy, guys in cream-colored golf shirts don’t just randomly suplex perfect strangers on their walk to work, what they saw must’ve been performance art or CGI.
This would be the most brazen getaway since the restaurant scene in the Godfather, which means I absolutely have to do it now at some point. Fellow pedestrians, please be advised, mind your paces, because the suplexes… they are a-coming.
My name is Mike and some days are more antisocial than others.
