SAA Ep. #39: Crossing the Street

I don't like crossing the street.

I don't live in a big city.  I don't know what I would do if I lived in a big city.  I'd probably sit in a dark corner and cry a lot.  ...and not just because I don't like crossing the street, but honestly, that has a lot to do with it.

When I go out jogging, I see a lot of people run up one side of the street, cross, and run down the other side of the street.  I don't do that.  When I reach the end of the sidewalk, I turn on my heel and run back down the same stretch of sidewalk.  Why?  Because I don't like that awkward moment of waiting to see what all the cars are going to do.  Are they going to stop for me or pretend they don't see me and speed on by?  Should I just bolt out in front of them, hoping they have good driving manners and/or brakes?  Should I hesitate and jog in place while waiting for them to make up their mind about whether or not they're going to stop?  What if there are two (or three) cars coming from separate directions?  What if one of them wants to stop and let me pass, but the others don't?  That means that one driver will have to wait for no reason and will have wasted a few seconds of his life, and all because he was trying to be nice to me.

I can't live with that kind of guilt.

So I don't cross the street unless I absolutely have to.

There's one particular intersection in the small town where I live that I avoid like the plague.  I'm not a big pedestrian, but it just so happens that my mechanic is right there near that intersection.  I sometimes leave my car there and walk up the street to a coffee shop to wait.   That often means I have to cross the street. 

Now, this intersection has those "WALK/DON'T WALK" lights, but I'm pretty sure they're only there to impress the tourists.  I've tried using them, but they don't seem to work.  When I use them, I almost always almost die while drivers honk their horns and scream obscenities at me (because apparently they have never heard that pedestrians have the right of way).  While I do always *try* pushing the button to see if it will help me out, I've found that a much better method of crossing this particular intersection is simply to look in every direction at the same time, wait until it seems that there are no cars coming from any direction (this sometimes can take several minutes), and then run like fire across the intersection, all the while praying that the traffic gods will be merciful. 

I hate, I repeat, HATE crossing the street. 

And from what I've seen, other people hate it, too.  I spend more time as a driver than as a pedestrian.  I frequent that same intersection as a driver.  Do you know what I see?  I see people standing at the crosswalk light, pressing the button.  Then they look in every direction at the same time.  Then they run like fire across the intersection. 

All except the newbies. 

The street crossing newbies are far more hesitant.  They follow the instructions of the deceptive "WALK" lights that inform them they have 12 seconds to safely cross.  Then they realize that a mud-covered pick-up truck with a ginormous Confederate Flag plastered on the back window is taking that unforeseen left turn pretty fast--too fast to avoid hitting them.  So they hesitate.  They turn back and retreat for the sidewalk, just in time to hear the obscenities fly and the horn beep out "Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton...."

Good times.

Yeah.  So maybe it makes me a three-year-old, but I don't like crossing the street by myself.  But then again, being a three-year-old has it's perks.  Does this mean I can have nap time again?