I'm Nice. Really.

I hate slow-walkers.

Hate is a strong word, I know.  Disdain sounds better.

Now, I'm not a terrible person.  I should qualify who I'm talking about.  I'm not referring to people who walk slow because of some particular reason like age or injury.  In those cases I just have mild frustration.  Then I remind myself that the kid is probably only four and I breathe deeply and zen-like patience returns.    

The disdain is reserved for the people who just, for no apparent reason, walk slow.  Even as individuals I can handle them.  When I come up behind one slow-walker I can easily maneuver around them and be on my way.  The true disdain is for the slow-walkers who organize into groups of slow-walkers, descending upon sidewalks, forcing anyone who wants to get around them into the street or over parked cars.

"So, what are you doing tonight? Nothing? Want to call a few more of our friends and hit up a busy street with heavy foot traffic and just walk slow?"

You often realize you're coming up on a gang of slow-walkers from a distance.  They usually travel in packs of 4 to 5 and take up the width of the sidewalk, arousing your suspicions from a few blocks away.  The suspicion turns into fear when you realize you are now only a half a block away and they are seemingly in the same location as when you first noticed them, yet they appear to indeed be walking.  You can always cross the street or take an alternative route to avoid the inevitable awkwardness and frustration of meeting up with the gang, but you run the risk of running into a separate group of slow-walkers.  If its convenient to change your route, I suggest that it is worth the risk.

But it's usually not convenient to change your route, so you just walk on and prepare yourself for the slow-walker encounter.  You try to tell yourself that maybe they'll turn or step into a store or restaurant but you're just lying to yourself.  They won't.  You think that maybe you can walk their pace and stay behind them, but don't kid yourself.  At that pace you will never get home.  You panic as you approach and realize there is no where for you to get around them in the next block:  there are parked cars and walking in the busy street, even for a moment, puts you in jeopardy of getting hit by a car, or worse, a bicycle.  So you just walk slower and keep an eye for the best opportunity to slip through their group.

This is when things get awkward.  At a certain point you find that you are actually a part of their group.  You are actually walking closer to them than they are.  How do they not notice you?  Maybe a few of them are actually non-slow-walkers but they too are trapped in the slow-walker gang.  Finally, if you're lucky, there's a bit of room in the group for you to squeeze through.  Sometimes you come off as rude, but you have to do whatever it takes to get away from the slow-walkers.

I don't have anything going on tonight.  Maybe I'll call a few of my friends and see if they want to find a busy street with heavy foot traffic and walk fast.  I think its time for a turf war.

Bring it, slow-walkers.  There's enough disdain to go around.