Pay Attention

I was in driving in downtown Portland last week when this happened. I was stopped at a traffic light on a two lane street. There was a transit bus sitting next to me. On the far side of the intersection there is a pedestrian crossing the street. He stops in the middle of the street, apparently preoccupied with something he is holding, a cell phone perhaps. The middle of the street is not a good place to stop, but we are stopped at the light and he is not in anybody's way. Eventually he starts to move, but haltingly, as though he can't quite break his attention away from whatever he is holding. Now he is directly in front of me, but we're still okay, he might make it to the curb before the light changes. Well, no, he doesn't. I give him a beep of the horn and start moving. No response, he continues his halting shuffle. I give him another toot. Still no response. I am half way across the intersection now, still moving slowly. I give him a third toot, but still no response, though by now he is almost to curb. The bus pulls up even with me (the pedestrian is well clear of the lane the bus occupies) and bus driver gives a long blast of his horn. The pedestrian gives no indication of having heard any of this. Finally he reaches the curb and mounts the sidewalk and it is clear enough to drive by. I give the truck a little extra gas so the tires will squeak to further announce my displeasure at this person's combined obliviousness / rudeness / stupidity.

I refer to this person as "him", but it was not clear that it was a man. It could have been a woman. It was wearing a jacket and a hat.

A few months ago there was a tragic accident downtown. A bus turned across a crosswalk and ran over a party of four pedestrians. At least one was killed. This may explain why the bus driver was more forceful with his horn than I was.

A couple of days ago at Costco I ran into a similar situation. I was driving toward the main entrance to the building when a woman starts across the driveway with her shopping cart. So far, so good, normal grocery store parking lot behavior. But then she stops halfway across and starts rooting around in her purse. I would have expected her to come to a quick decision and either go back or go on, but no, she stays there continuing to dig through her bag. I drive around her at five MPH. I don't think she even looked up.

A woman was killed crossing the street in downtown Hillsboro this week. A pickup truck was turning the corner and hit her while going about five MPH. She fell and hit her head on the pavement. An accident pure and simple, near as I can tell. I suspect that for whatever reason the driver just didn't see her.

I went to the lab this morning to get some blood drawn for some kind of voodoo. I didn't get there till about ten and I was surprised to see four people ahead of me. Early in the morning this many people would be normal, but by this time I would expect the rush to have dropped off. It's twenty minutes before the first person is done. One woman, fed up with waiting judging by the expression on her face, gets up and leaves. Another twenty minutes goes by and Sandy, the queen of the vampires, shows up and takes over, just in time to take care of me. This is doubly fortunate, because she is the only one at this lab who can reliably find a vein in my arm.

Slowpoke and Sandy have a brief conversation as Sandy takes over, and it was a little odd. The woman holds up a sheet of paper and asks Sandy whether it should be sent on or not. Sandy was a little discomfited by this. I finally realized that slowpoke was inserting something irrelevant into the process. Perhaps she was new to the job and didn't understand just what the procedures were, but I suspect it was more along the lines of she didn't really have a clue as to what needed to be done because it hadn't been drilled into her for the last ten years.