Saturday, August 11, 2007
No, you are not alone in a New York City rush hour!
This past Thursday morning, a young woman cut across my path as I was at the intersection of Wall Street and Nassau. There was a solid mass of people heading in the opposite direction to me and I was in the only place left for me – at the foot of the stairs to the exhibition centre (at least that’s what I think it is) which forms the ‘T’ at the top of Broad Street. I was heading to my office at 14 Wall, from Mangia, which is at 40 Wall, with my morning coffee. As I reached the end of the steps, this 20 something [expletive excluded] cuts an angle across my path. I had absolutely nowhere to go, so I went nowhere. She just barrelled on, slamming into my left shoulder and into the crowd. A couple of months ago, courtesy of a partially torn rotator cuff in that shoulder, she would have really hurt me. My shoulder is hard now, and it was this lovely young lady (I originally wrote ‘ignorant bitch’, but thought some people might take offense) that got nailed and not me!
Later the same day, when a woman walking alongside me on a rather less crowded street, suddenly decided that she just had to cut directly across me, I managed to stop just in time. These are just a couple of examples, but stuff like this happens more than once just about every day. And it is hardly a new phenomenon.
Back in 1985, when I spent a very few months here between living in New Orleans and going home to London, I gave up trying to avoid people who did that and just kept on walking. I tripped several people. It is tempting to start doing that again. These assholes deserve to pay a little consequence for their selfishness. If a lot of people just said “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”, and managed to not stop their strides when this happened to them, perhaps it would happen a little less often? It’s a consequence thing. Few people complain when food is served cold or sub-standard, so more eateries serve their food that way. Few people complain about rude or poor service, so it becomes sufficiently normal that we are desensitised to it. And assholes walk wherever the fuck they want to walk, because the nice folk they are cutting across almost always manage to avoid collision.
Until the backlash of the decent folk, however, I would just like to point out to the butt of my ire – you know who you are – a few things:
a) I am not invisible
b) I cannot disappear into thin air just because you want to be where I already am.
c) If you are not neutrinos, you cannot pass through me unnoticed.
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Later the same day, when a woman walking alongside me on a rather less crowded street, suddenly decided that she just had to cut directly across me, I managed to stop just in time. These are just a couple of examples, but stuff like this happens more than once just about every day. And it is hardly a new phenomenon.
Back in 1985, when I spent a very few months here between living in New Orleans and going home to London, I gave up trying to avoid people who did that and just kept on walking. I tripped several people. It is tempting to start doing that again. These assholes deserve to pay a little consequence for their selfishness. If a lot of people just said “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”, and managed to not stop their strides when this happened to them, perhaps it would happen a little less often? It’s a consequence thing. Few people complain when food is served cold or sub-standard, so more eateries serve their food that way. Few people complain about rude or poor service, so it becomes sufficiently normal that we are desensitised to it. And assholes walk wherever the fuck they want to walk, because the nice folk they are cutting across almost always manage to avoid collision.
Until the backlash of the decent folk, however, I would just like to point out to the butt of my ire – you know who you are – a few things:
a) I am not invisible
b) I cannot disappear into thin air just because you want to be where I already am.
c) If you are not neutrinos, you cannot pass through me unnoticed.
