A Mind That Suits What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.



Monday, November 10, 2003 :::
 
How rude can people get?

Regular readers know that A Mind That Suits hates sprawl, and finds conservative snickering over the issue to be ill-considered, at best. Is there really no harm to society in the fact that millions of us are stuck in traffic every morning for an hour or more, completely isolated from human contact except for the anger that traffic uniquely causes?

But people have always been rude and inconsiderate. Modern life just supplies more opportunities, and fewer constraints. A car-free life in the most beautiful city in America is hardly free from this general truth.

This morning, A Mind That Suits heard the distinctively annoying click of a hurrying woman in the wrong-sized high heels. A glance back revealed she was also talking on the cell phone and struggling with her oversized bag. Being a gentleman and not in as great a hurry, A Mind That Suits stepped aside to let the woman pass. In about 10 steps, she arrived at the first of her important destinations, the drop-off box for Blockbusters, whereupon she slowed down dramatically as she struggled harder to pull the video out of her over-sized bag. Only she also began to stagger and veer all over the sidewalk, effectively stopping A Mind That Suits in his tracks. My, how important it was that she jump ahead of him for an entire second.

He will now be less likely to step out of the way for overscheduled, preoccupied young ladies, who in turn will wonder about the decline in chivalry.

Washington's famed Metro is indeed visually stunning, but it is also stunningly mismanaged and eternally plagued by technical problems. Shortly after the Showdown at the Blockbuster's Drop-Box, A Mind That Suits found himself on a train whose automatic controls were having some problems. Normally the trains, controlled by a central computer system, accelerate and decelerate almost imperceptibly, making it possible to stand reading without holding on to anything. Not this morning. The train lurched forward and slammed to a halt with little reason and no predictibility, making a pole essential for one's safety. A Mind That Suits found himself at the pole nearest a door, and so grabbed it. And as the train was jerking into Dupont Circle, one middle-aged gentlemen, who at least dressed the part of a sharp lawyer, got up from his seat and made it clear that he was going for the door on the other side of the arm of A Mind That Suits. After a second's pause about two inches from said arm, he began to move forward again, clearly intending to force the arm out of the way, without so much as an "excuse me." A Mind That Suits said simply,"After the train stops. I'm not going to fall over." The guy-who-dressed-like-a-sharp-lawyer merely nodded assent to the reasonableness of the declaration, but did not apologize for his rudeness nor, it goes without saying, laugh quietly and self-deprecatingly. Self-deprecation is not considered a virtue in this town.

And people wonder why they are in a foul mood when they get to the office.


::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 10:04 AM


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