Pet peeve #3

People who cannot anticipate the flow of human traffic...

You've seen it, you've loathed it...I really don't feel as though I need to explain any further...but I will!  Have you ever been walking through a busy sidewalk and not run into any bottlenecks or 'snags'?!  I sure have!  There is nothing better, am I right?  Okay, I guess there are a few things that arouse me more ;) but not many!  As much as we ALL love walking uninterrupted through the 'street', we can't always be so lucky.  Picture this, you're walking down the sidewalk when all of a sudden, the man walking towards you walks directly into you...confusing, right?!  Yah, that's what I'm talking about.  It may be one of the MOST frustrating things in the entire world...more so than mass-famine!  That may have been a little over-kill, but you get the point, frustrating!

So I was walking down Prince's Street today (for those of you who do not know Prince's Street, it's EASILY 25-30 feet wide with walking space), and this woman comes walking towards me, so I move to my right, and subsequently, she moves to her right to pass gracefully...you would assume this would be the path of least resistance, but no, what does she do?  She then proceeds to jet back to her left and tries to pass me on my right.  Now obviously it's too late to reach all the way back inside my brain for the appropriate reflex, so what happens next, you ask?  Nothing...I stop.  Dead in my tracks...she stops dead, so now we're both standing there like a couple of idiots on the busiest sidewalk in the world!  The funniest part of this story is that she thought I was at fault...WHAT?!?!  No.  It is common sidewalk etiquette to observe and anticipate the future movements of others on the walk, as I did, she was walking straight, I made a forecast of the situation...in fact, the same judgement ANYONE would have made in that scenario!  It was just really annoying that she thought it was my fault...I'M not the one who changed paths without adequate notice to the requisite radius of people affected by my movements...no...I'm pretty sure that was YOU!!!

Well, as you can imagine, that would be more than enough frustration in said category for the day, but no, it happened once again.  I was on my way back home from downtown, and the sidewalks on the branching streets are nowhere near the width of Prince's Street.  So I'm walking, listening to my Eric Whitacre on full-blast when all of a sudden, the man in-front of me walking in the same direction, just stops.  For no reason, he just...stops.  And you know, that would usually be enough for me to lose it, but wait, there's more...he just stood there for a good 15 seconds (and if you're thinking 'well that's not too long', you're right, if you're baking a cake, and you are 15 seconds late taking it out of the oven, it's not long in the slightest.  BUT, when you are on an extremely crowded sidewalk, 15 seconds goes by at it's own leisurely pace!) until the not-unattractive girl behind me says 'Hey, what's going on?' to me, thinking that I'm the one plugging traffic.  Don't worry though, I turned around, pointed at the guy and said 'I think he died...' and she burst into laughter (that's how long we were standing there.  Long enough for her to get frustrated enough to say something, still leaving time for me to break out my expeditious wit)!  As you can see, if it weren't for the little blonde behind me, I may have died from frustration!  The other part that may have made it worse was the fact that he just kinda looked annoying...does that make sense?  Have you ever just looked at someone and decided, in preparation, that they were an annoying person?  I have, and he was one of them, let me tell you!

Thank you for tuning in to the third instalment of 'What everyone is thinking, but will not say...'  This has been Master Sinclair coming to you from his bedroom in Edinburgh ;)