I took Sumo along on an errand on bike early this Sunday morning, while traffic would be still light and the air still cool. At the crossing we stopped, I pushed the buttons and waited for the lights to turn green for us and then attempted to walk across. But this being the community we live in, the one driver to share the road with us chose to speed up during his left turn and to deny us our right of way!
My first reaction was fear for Sumo as my little Yorkie/Poodle/Maltese has a tendency to veer off and take up inordinate space, be it on the road or in bed. But my well behaved little guy was exactly where he was supposed to be, on heel, unharmed, relief.
A variation of this happens all too often and of late I tend to get infuriated way too often. For 18 months now I have been a pedestrian or bicyclist while my van stayed parked at home. I wore my bright, colorful summer dress, I really was not that easy to overlook. I had only a few more seconds left for crossing on green (another peril when cars from the opposite direction want to make their right turn before their light turns.) So when I watched that driver pull in to the parking lot, I rushed after him, my stomach in knots, to give him a piece of my mind. The driver, an older, gaunt and a bit scruffy looking man emerged from his vehicle, came toward me, his eyes red and in tears - he apologized! He stunned me when he said he came to apologize. I told him that he scared me and I pointed to my dog. Now both of us in tears we stood outside Trader Joe's as he promised me to pay more attention!
We are all in this together, we share and sometimes collide in time and space, please pay attention, especially when on the road and in particular when behind the wheels of a potential deadly weapon. I know lack of attention from myself when lost in day dreaming or when I am preoccupied. I have made mistakes as well, took an easy illegal turn, tried to get ahead of someone a bit or a lot slower, I have attempted shortcuts. Please remember that we are all in this together and pay the attention that we, our kids and our pets deserve!
Sadly a woman on bike downtown was hit by a female driver and hospitalized with critical injuries only yesterday, June 27th. Alcohol did not play a role for once we were told.
I've been catching up on your recent posts.
ReplyDeleteYou have a social conscience, not something seen round blogland all that often, although the people I visit are, on the whole, decent and kind.
Still, to find a driver who apologises for impeding your right of way, is a rarity. You are right, we are all in this together and must be aware of our fellow man and his needs as much as we are aware of our own.
"Researcher Taryn Yaeger looked at 7,000 pieces that appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal between 15 September and 7 December 2011, and found that women ... were almost mute on matters such as Occupy Wall Street and other protests or rallies (14% of commentaries), international politics (13%), and the economy (11%)."
Delete"By being effectively absent from "the conversation" much of the time, they're not exerting as much influence as they could and should – which also means it's easier for the issues significant to them to get swept under the rug, or decided by people who do not have ovaries."
"It seems, in other words, that a lack of self-confidence is part of the problem. But there's an ouroboros element to women's insecurity: it's understandable, if lamentable, that they have trouble thinking of themselves as experts when four out of five of the pontificators in the mainstream media are males – and a very specific kind of male, at that. "Close to 80% or more of the participants in public conversation are white men of a particular social strata."
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/273-40/11917-focus-why-women-have-no-opinions
We all have a social conscience, we all have a Uranus placement in our charts, but do we express it? I found the above article thought provoking.