A No-Stopping Zone

I like to consider myself a fairly patient man. I can be quite willing to walk people through a new procedures once or twice without complaint (though, any more than that will be pushing it) and if a project takes a few tries to get finished I will stick with it until it is completed to my usual standards. I am very lucky in that I have good time-management skills and never find myself in too much of a rush to the point I have to start cutting corners. There is only one real time when I get truly impatient and that is when I am trying to get somewhere and someone is moving slowly and in my way. I have always had a thing about getting to my destination as quickly as possible. There is something about going slower than my mind tells me I could be moving that causes me to become slightly unhinged, which is why I will drive two miles out of my way if I can keep moving rather than drive half a mile in stop-and-go traffic (a maneuver I like to call 'shark driving'). Even if I don't particularly want to end up where I am going I at least want to make good time getting there (the earlier I can get there the faster I can get this over with) and even when I have all day to finish a couple minor errands I stare at the clock when I am doing them like I am on a deadline. All of this makes the fact that I get stuck behind slow people almost everywhere I go from walking at the mall to driving on the road all the more ironic.

There is something very self-centered about people who hog public space by moving slowly, as if this is there store and we should be happy they allowed us access to it. Even worse is when people are walking along and then stop for no damn good reason. Unlike with a car, people don't have taillights to signal a warning they are about to stop, so coming to a halt in the middle of a walkway seems worse than anywhere else. I can sort of understand it while shopping in a store because something may just catch your eye and you need to make an unexpected move to investigate it further, but to me there is no excuse for it while walking in between stores. The people who feel the need to stop in the middle of a bustling mall at Christmastime to call their relative and ask an inane question, then spend 5 minutes looking for their phone should have their phones taken away from them as punishment. This is another time when stepping off to the side would also work well because I feel like the very least you can do is not stand in the middle of the aisle. And don't get me started on the people who stop on the stairs. A couple of months ago I was at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame going up some steps at the highest point of the Hall when the people in front of me suddenly stopped and decided that this was the best place to have a conversation about the Rolling Stones. Considering I don't particularly enjoy heights and these particular stairs were suspended out over a three-story drop, I nearly threw them over the side.

Still, even with the homicidal thoughts running through my brain in that situation, I have to admit my impatience may have reached its apex earlier this afternoon. I was sitting at a red light where I was the third car in line. The car directly in front of me was a police cruiser. About 30 seconds before the light changed a man who was either drunk or high stumbled his way across the street, right between the first car and the cruiser. I don't know if it is technically a crime to be drunk and walking down the sidewalk at 1 o'clock but in any other situation I would probably want the police to have a conversation with the guy just to make sure he wasn't planning to keep walking down the street or at least in need of any assistance. However, in this particular moment as I watched the cop roll down his window just as the light turned green my main impulse was to hope the cop didn't want to make this a long conversation and force me to miss the light because there was no room for me to get around him. The good news for me is that this was a local cop and all the drunk had to say was that he was fine and the cop took him at his word, apparently not wanting to miss the light either. Probably not the finest of detective work in that situation but frankly, the cop should be commended for not just hitting his siren and blowing through the light in the first place because that is what I would have done.

I know all this ranting and raving makes me appear slightly crazy and if this only happened on the odd occasion I would see your point of view. However you have to understand where I am coming from (those are the rules since this is my blog) and know that this kind of thing happens every single time I go out. Some times it feels like I have a sign hanging from my neck that I can't see which reads, "Please stand in front of this guy" and another which hangs from my car that says, "Go ahead and pull out at the last second. He'll stop." Another thing in my defense is that I have yet to act on any of these momentary flare-ups of annoyance. Look, I don't have a problem if someone needs to go slower than me, I get that I have longer legs and it makes me move a little faster (not usually an adjective used to describe me). I also know not everyone has my compulsion to move at a fast pace. Additionally I will grant you that sometimes people aren't sure where they need to go and slow down to make sure they don't over-shoot their destination. It is not the why I take exception to, it is the where. You can take all day to make a two-mile trip - I only ask that you do it off to the side and if you are lost the left lane is not the place to pull out your map. Just remember to be courteous to your fellow drivers because some of them have places to be and others just want to beat our personal records.