It feels like a long time since I sat down and had a really good moan about something that isn't university, drinking or females (a reference to Friday Night Dinner for you there). Tonight I'm branching out and I've decided to just have a moan about people in general. Well, not everyone because that would require a book but a certain type of person that I've come across recently. I live and go to university in a pretty busy city and my route to university includes a particularly busy part of it. Everyday I walk to and from my flat hoping that that will be the day when someone doesn't walk into me. I'm not that big a target nor am I the kind of person that walks so casually that I end up walking into people. It appears that I carry on my head a homing beacon for these people who, for the sake of this blog post anyway, will be referred to as idiots.
I only really started noticing this about a month ago when the weather started to pick up a bit after the bitter winter that we had. A fairly basic observation of the human race will tell you that people don't like to be cold and therefore they don't leave their homes when it's cold. Now that it's started to get a bit warmer, people are back out again. Done with their winter hibernation, they all seemed to simultaneously remember that their sole purpose on this earth was to walk into me - and then not apologise (see below!). It is almost as if a memo has been sent out to everyone within my postal region (except me) that they must, at all costs, walk into at least one student on a daily basis. Oh ye and make sure they are male, have dark hair, dashingly handsome (leave it out) and are wearing that 'if you walk into me and I'm not going to be too chuffed' face.
With this memorandum, these idiots (which sounds a bit harsher than I want it to) also received a guide on how to be rude after you've walked into this unnamed person. Not only have they to succeed in being clumsy and rude in the first place but they also must make the aforementioned student feel as though he is in the wrong. I'm pretty sure that the 'how to' advice says that they have to look up at something in the sky (which isn't there) and then wait until he's close before veering into him, causing him to apologise and thus absolving them of any fault. Not only that but when the poor student man walks away from the scene of the crime, he will realise that he was in fact walking in a straight line, in a direction aimed only at open path - and that they weren't.
One of my favourite examples of this came last week en route to a tutorial. It was a nice enough day and I was in a good enough mood - everything was just right. Walking in my careful forward trajectory, I saw a large man about 10 metres in front of me admiring something in a tree. Now I know that we are supposed to be in spring but there is nothing in the trees that is worth looking at yet. I had clocked this man a mile off and so I veered slightly off course so as to avoid having to label him an idiot. Our paths moved closer together and I thought I was free. But no. He lost interest in the scabby tree and started to move off, diagonally into my path - into me. Never did I think it would be possible to look vacant and hacked off at the same time but this man had it down - obviously he got the deluxe memo. He looked as though I had defecated on his shoe and then spat in his eye - in hindsight I wish I had.
Of course I'm more polite that I give myself credit for and I apologised - but nothing. He didn't even acknowledge that I was there never mind the fact that I had usurped his right to say sorry. From that day forward, that huge, tree-loving man will be known as an idiot and he only has himself to blame.
Rant over for now but I'll be back. I've actually got this real urge to tackle a 'big issue' in the next week or so but I'll see how time goes and whether I can form a good enough argument.
Thanks for reading.
Martin
