And Now A Word About Pedestrians

Yesterday I had several places to go for weekend errands. As usual, this required maneuvering my way through parking lots of the various stores I had business with. Once again I had cause to reflect on the bad habits and downright rudeness of pedestrians.

When I was a little girl, all the grownups in my life impressed upon me the necessity for watching where I was going, and never walking out in front of a moving vehicle. As my previous post mentioned (see "David The Daredevil") my parents preached this lesson constantly. Well, to be honest, my father was a police officer and always was strict about obeying all the laws.

So I taught my daughter the same rule. Never, ever step out into the path of a car unless you are very sure they are stopped and will not run you over. She learned her lesson well. In fact, one of her friends told her about an incident when he was a child and riding his new bicycle to the store for his Mom. He got to the stop sign and waited because there was a car approaching. The car (actually it was a van) stopped at the sign and motioned for the child to go ahead and cross the street. As soon as the little boy got in the crosswalk, the man gunned his engine and hit the boy and his new bicycle. The man fled the scene, leaving the child hurt and bleeding and his new bicycle a crumpled mess in the intersection. Fortunately a kindhearted man who had seen the entire incident, rushed to the little boy, gathered him up in his arms and took him home. It was a very small community and the good Samaritan knew the boy's family and where he lived. It's the kind of horror story you never want to hear about, but one of the reasons the lesson of watching traffic must be instilled at a very early age. But I digress.

Back to yesterday's outing and my ongoing frustration with people, young and old. I was driving slowly past the entrances of several stores in the complex on my way to the grocery store beyond. People were coming from the parking lot to go into the stores and people were leaving the stores to return to their cars. And here's my point. Not one person, not one, stopped as I approached the path they were taking. In fact, not only did they not stop, most of them didn't even glance in my direction. One man actually turned his head away from me as he stepped into my path. It was as if he was defying me to hit him.

So I have to wonder. Who raised these people? What kind of training and discipline were they given? Is it due to the times we live in where so many people think they are the only important creature in the world and everyone else has to look out for them and take care of them?

Or is this yet another example of the coarsening of society and abandonment of civility. Not only did my parents and grandparents teach me there was a little matter of self preservation involved, they also stressed this was just plain rude and "full of yourself". Being "full of yourself" was a major sin in those days. I was taught that although I was loved and special to my family, in the big scheme of things I was no better than anybody else and not entitled to special treatment by the general public. During those times, most people held the same views about this. You were also taught to "take turns" (and this was a biggy at school), to say "please" and "thank you", and to be civil to your elders. This was the way it was and every child was expected to be taught these lessons and to practice them.

When you get right down to it, if you respect others, you also learn to respect yourself. Children need social skills to survive and parents need to teach them. But the people I'm encountering currently are apparently not qualified to teach these lessons because they obviously never learned them, themselves.

So next time you are driving in a crowded parking lot, pay attention to the number of people you see who actually acknowledge you are behind the wheel of a two-ton killing machine and stop to allow you to pass. If you encounter a person who does, it will probably be me or my daughter. But keep in mind the story of the little boy and his bicycle. We may insist that you and your automobile go first and we'll just wait.