2001-03-26 - 19:35 MST

Curbside Courtesy

Pondering some ot the questions of daily life and relationships between humans sometimes is like watching a load of clothes spinning and mixing in a dryer.

It seems odd you know, how someone who hastened to hold a door open for me and even went to the trouble to open the inner door also - - can become an amok berserker when behind the wheel of their personal car.

Pause - - huh ?

Does the person feel they are in an unconquerable fort on wheels, a tank mayhap ?

Or do they undergo a complete personality switch from gentle to brutal ?

Pause - - huh ?

Do they feel they can bluff and bull their way through any set of circumstances ?

On foot they seem to act well, as if a good Mother taught them. Yet a car is not a gun, though they are aimed instead of steered. The car is not to blame and it does not have a Stephen King ability to change a person into a monster.

Do they think that this lame and halt old geezer hobbling with his cane suddenly becomes a twenty year old with all of the reflexes alertness, seeing and hearing normal to that age and thus becomes a deadly enemy when afoot on the street or parking lot ?

Once in a while I see a motorist make a signal well before changing lanes, even rarer is the individual who does so and gives the, "Please may I ?" look and then gives a grateful wave as they pull in ahead of me.

Are those who are unmannerly on the street the ones who will put on a huge spurt of speed with their grocery cart to ace you out at the checkout ? The ones who majestically cut in to a line, any line, anywhere as if they have a God given right to do so ? The ones who have a W.C. Fields snotty attitude of, "Go away boy, you bother me. Did your parents have any children ?"

Are they also the ones who will whip into a handicap parking space, without the handicapped plates on the car or a handicapped card in the windshield, spryly jump out of their chariot and when challenged that they are illegally parked there, toss the comment over their shoulder, "Well, humph, I'm only gonna be a minute."

Wonder how many pedestrians get the goop scared out of them by a "honky," impatient driver (I think that is how the name of, "Honky," was hung on us palefaces) who is hurrying to confession ? Or home from work to pop the top on a Bud and slouch into their easy chair and complain about their hard day at work ?

Those who are in such a hurry, couldn't they have left home earlier on their way to work and be willing to cut slack for walkers if they are on the way home ?

I could hazard a guess that they are the ones who can't toss a paper towel into the trash after a rinse and have walked away already without flushing the commode.

As I sit here squeezing my brains and thinking of the aforementioned things, I begin to wonder how many omissions and commissions of acts of civil misbehavior I have comitted in the realm of Curbside Courtesy . . . . .

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