One culprit that's 99% certain to get me riled is people (behaving badly) on the sidewalk. It seems that I'm forever jumping out of the way of people who are walking blindly with their heads down while texting. Or I'm avoiding people who seem to think that the sidewalk is theirs and theirs alone. Things are about to change in Toronto, and I'm the (mad) man to do it.
You've heard of road rage? I'm suffering from sidewalk rage!
I can live with my condition...suffering in silence. Figure the odds. Or I can do something about it. So far I've come up with two remedies, both of which I've proven to work in clinical trials:
1) stand my ground. I decided that I was no longer going to 'bow down' to rude walkers. Yesterday morning I was walking along the sidewalk with Wendy. A woman wearing headphones (strike one!) walked out of her apartment, along her walkway to the edge of the sidewalk, and proceeded to step directly in front of me (strike two!) and then to walk in front of me. I made the conscious decision not to slow down but to keep my pace. The result? I stepped on the back of her boot. I said 'I'm sorry' because I didn't purposely try to de-laminate her boot, but I wasn't truly sorry. On the contrary, I was quite delighted.
2) go to Yorkville. Yorkville is an other-worldly place where people compete to be seen. They liberally apply fashion, in blazing Van Gogh strokes, upon their bodily canvasses. It's true of men and women alike, often indistinguishable without a pawing of the nethers. Allow me illuminate with an example...
I was walking through Yorkville yesterday on my way to Whole Foods in search of the holy grail of Moroccan cooking, the preserved lemon. When life gives you lemons, make a tagine (old Berber proverb). As I was walking along the sidewalk I glanced ahead, about 150 feet, to see a creature so bizarre that I had no idea if it was man or beast. It was white, or off-white, resembling a mid-range polar bear on its hind legs. It also had yeti-like qualities (winter fur, perfectly camouflauged for hiding in snow banks....then pouncing). At the same time it also had many characteristics normally found in sports team mascots: large, round, undeterminable exo-genitalia.
I had my camera with me but wasn't sure if it was prudent to snap an image. I opted for not. As the creature approached I could see that it was probably about 70 years old with blonde hair that would have made Gwyneth Paltrow gween. Not bad for a man except, in fact, it was a woman. It wasn't until it got about ten feet from me that I realized that it was she-like. For the record, it was not a transvestite....this time. And I want you to note in the accompanying image to this story that I needed Johnny Winter, a Stormtrooper's helmet and an albino Sasquatch to emulate her look.
The sad reality is that this woman had gone to great lengths, and expense, to look this way. Quite frankly, there are a lot of dog owners in Toronto and I don't know how she managed to walk down the street without being mauled. My animal instincts told me to either flee or fight her to the death. I chose to flee...not sure how a dog would have dealt with her.
It's a strange old world here in Toronto. You can let it get you down or you can step on its boots and laugh in its face (or, at least, behind its back...which I did heartily).
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