Rudeness

     Driving in downtown Portland is good way to kill a couple of hours, and that's if you're only going a few blocks. Any farther than that and you may as well write off the whole week. There's all the usual problems with driving downtown: lots of traffic, narrow lanes, random road closures for construction, big trucks sitting in the middle of the street. In Portland we also have "bus only" routes. But the one thing that makes it really hopeless is that the traffic lights are set to accommodate bicycles, which means they are set to 12 MPH (miles per hour). At 12 MPH I will die of boredom in two blocks.

    Sometimes you just have to sacrifice part of your life to get where you want to go, which is what darling daughter and I were doing the other day when a couple of kids (meaning under 30) stepped into the crosswalk in front of us just as the light turned green for us. Yahoos. I've been learning to watch for pedestrians and stop for them, so I just sat and waited for them to finish crossing the street before I took off, where upon I stomped the gas just enough to squeak the tires at them.

    My daughter chastised me for being rude. I countered that those two hadn't been paying attention, and not paying attention when you are walking around downtown can be fatal, so I was doing them a favor by letting them know they had crossed the line. She didn't accept that, she recommended her response, which is to yell  at them (as long as the windows are rolled up) and then forget about it.

    I thought about this and I tried to think of a better method of communicating with our two yahoos. I could have yelled and/or cursed at them (with my window down), but somehow that doesn't seem like an improvement. I could have called out a pleasant hello as I drove by, but somehow I don't think that would have told them anything. I suppose I could have stopped and taken the time to explain how they had nearly gotten kilt. That might have worked, but then again they might have just blown me off as some old fart messin' wit dem. Or worse yet, they might have asked me for a ride.