Argument clinic

Kathryn and I seem to be arguing a lot lately. The most current quibble was about jay-walking. Let me set up the situation.

After sharing delicious coffee smoothies at the Stupe, Kathryn and I walk back to our respective houses. At the corner of University and Howard we pause before we go our separate directions. I will go straight on University a ways before skirting through a parking lot and the secret passage. She will turn North on Howard to where her house sits. Diagonally across from our talking spot is the sidewalk that leads up to the Smith-Traber dormitory, where freshmen and sophomores live, as did Kathryn the previous two years.

Many students find it more convenient to walk diagonally across the intersection instead of making a right angle at the crosswalks. Apparently they’ve taken geometry and know that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. And they’re busy; it shaves a couple of seconds off the total trek time.

I have a tendency to be quite irritated when I think people are being rude or inconsiderate. For instance, when someone interrupts a conversation to talk only with one person in the group without acknowledging the others – though perhaps they recently actually met the other people in the group – I consider that rude and have a hard time letting go of my annoyance, shrugging it off. I’m working on this. So as Kathryn and I stood there, chatting about our computers and wireless cards, I noticed a Traber-type casually walking straight across the intersection, holding up a car that was waiting to go straight. I mentioned to Kathryn how rude it was for students to do that when cars were waiting, and she disagreed with me. She thought that cars could wait – they have a stop sign, the pedestrian has the right of way, it only takes a few more seconds. She said that I had standards that I expected everyone to conform to (funny, Kathryn – my standards happen to be the law!). What I would appreciate is for students to walk diagonally only when there are no cars waiting. When there are vehicles, either walk completely in the crosswalks or let the car go through and then skirt across the intersection. (So I guess my standards aren’t completely based on what is legal, but more on what is pragmatically most useful to all parties…I shall have to muse more on this).

In a preemptive response, let me tell you, my faithful reader, what Kathryn’s rebuttal was so that she cannot skewer me in the comments section: “But you’ve never lived there!” Apparently, walking across that intersection several times a day gets tedious, and it is easier to go straight from point A to point B than to walk in the crosswalks. Her claim is true: I have never lived in either Smith or Traber dormitories, and I do not have the existential experience of having to cross two streets every time I need to go somewhere on campus. Judge between us, my readers: is that sufficient reason to put ourselves and our desires before those of others? Cars can wait, but so can we, the pedestrians. Being rude isn’t the ultimate sin, and sometimes may even be necessary, but I think that being considerate has a lot of parallels with putting one another’s needs before our own and laying down our rights. It’s a place to start.

I do need to stop being ultra critical. People may not realize their rudeness, and I should never assume that they are being so on purpose. And the title of my post is from a Monty Python skit: check it out.