The beautiful circle of rudeness.

Porter Square

Porter Square, the third most confusing intersection in our town hosted a clinic of how rudeness begets rudeness.  It also has much to do with one’s own sense of self rightness, and a bit of “point of self values” which I have written about in the past.

The scene:

I am standing on the sidewalk waiting for the little cold white LED lit person figure to tell me to walk.  I wait because I am damn sure that I have not figured this intersection out.  Every time I think I have the patterns calculated, some two ton chunk of steel and aluminum comes whipping around a corner and I almost become dead.  So I wait.  I stand there with a resolved stance that tries to broadcast to others “please wait like me, because the next worst thing besides me becoming integrated into a car grille is watching you take my place in that gruesome sequence.”

Alas, a very bold and dare-devilish middle aged gentleman who must have a soufflé in the oven, or something, decides to give it a go.  I shake my head and my soul cringes a bit.  On cue, a lovely Honda Accord piloted by a lovely woman turns the corner, sees green light, sees the man striding in front of her, and stops short of hitting him.  She comes to rest halfway into the crosswalk.  He stops in front of her and proceeds to lecture her on how he is in the crosswalk and she is a terrible driver.  She looks stunned.  The light turns yellow as the car pulled close behind her starts honking.  The light goes red.  She looks frazzled.  The man makes his way to whatever was so important, unscathed.

Time passes while some sort of traffic calculus is worked out and then a minute later the walk signal turns white and the wimpier pedestrians are let loose.  A young urbanite in his bike helmet, safety vest, with LED’s blinking from just about everywhere, begins walking his bike across the crosswalk.  This, the walking of the bike, is a remarkable showing of rule following.  He then turns to our stranded Accord Driver and throws his hand up in disgust and pointing to the ground shouting “CROSSWALK, CROSSWALK LADY!”.  The Accord driver frowns, and shrugs.  She is visibly upset.   Finally the pedestrians are stopped by the blinking red figure.

I turn around to watch her as the light turns green, she is so flustered that she pushed the gas and takes what happens to be an un-protected and probably illegal left turn.  Pedestrians are crossing the street she is turning on and she leans on the horn waving her hands for them to get out of her way.  They scatter among much swearing and some single digit hand gesturing.  No one has died, except maybe a little bit on the inside.

The take away:

What happened here?  In my estimation, there was one rude person.  He was the original rule breaker. Mr. Soufflé’.  There were two self righteous thoughtless people who saw something that resembled incompetence or lack of rule following and exacerbated the situation. This was the biker, and honker trapped behind our Honda Accord driver.  Then there was the driver herself, who after being the victim of true rudeness, and confused rudeness, reacted badly and let her own perceptions of what her own rights were get the best of her.  She became rude to another whole group of people who … probably stiffed their waitress, or grumbled at the CVS cashier just moments later.

What really happened here is a whole series of people who are reacting very abruptly to symbols of rudeness and fighting back with rudeness which causes rudeness.  A car pulled into a crosswalk does not always mean that a driver is a pedestrian hater, or a rule disobeyer.  A car not moving when the light is green does not mean the driver in front is texting, or sleeping, or has it out for you personally.  A pedestrian that is walking across the street in front of you when you thought you had the right of way may not be a brigade of people coordinating their action to keep you frustrated and frazzled.

The whole point really is that most of the time.  Really MOST, of the time there is some extenuating circumstance why someone is in your way, taking too long, or breaking the rules.  They are almost never what you think they are.  I guess what I am saying is that we all need to take a breath and try to keep assumption from playing into these situations.  We are too busy looking for simple answers where there are none to be had.  Things are complex more often then simple, and understanding that way might allow us to back away from the feeling of others being so rude.  Taking a second to look around and think of what ELSE might have been going on might have save some sweet broke waitress their tip somewhere in the shuffle.  Give it a try, for her sake.

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