Thought of the day: someone is behind you. No really. Someone is right behind you! Please, by all means, turn around and look. Ha! I'm assuming no one was behind you. But you didn't know until you turned around, did you? Well, that's the TOTD.
I have this syndrome. It's called, "ICantStandBeingBehindPeopleitis". Normally I don't admit that to people, but, well, there it is. It's not that I have to be ahead of everyone. I simply don't like being behind. Really, what this means is I have no need to define myself by other people's actions (I came to this conclusion when I was driving one day trying to figure out if I was Mr. Testerone or if it was something else. I concluded it was something else, because I don't need people behind me which would have pointed to Mr. T. I simply don't attend to other people who are plugging along in their own lives. I'm happy in my own warm blanket of "stay the hell out of the way").
However, many of us have been in the situation where a lady with a shopping cart is walking down the aisle in a store. Simple enough. Except when you do the math, she really is only taking up a quarter of the aisle. However, because of HOW she is taken up the aisle (walking in the middle with a gentle drift back and forth like she is bouncing between lines on the road after a late night of rum and coke), you simply can't get past her. (If you haven't been in this situation, look behind you).
Now, this isn't limited to women. But typically it's the women pushing the cart. With guys, they don't have to have a cart. They will do this with their elbows spread out and their ego filling the gaps between a doorway or an aisle. Now, I'm making some leaps here and a couple assumptions. But here goes. The woman does it because she is oblivious due to the other thoughts going through her head, such as comparisons, pricing, etc. The man does it cause his ego causes him to believe that the only matter in the world worth considering is his very next step and how the peanut butter is all the better now that he decided to travel that aisle instead down the aisle of the spaghetti (poor spaghetti).
Really, they both are doing the same damned thing. They are both in my way. When I come up against issues like this where the cause appears to be completely respective to genders (not to say that guys aren't taking up the aisle due to pricing and women aren't strutting their egoshiz, but I'm generalizing ), instead of, like some guys do, assuming that women are at fault cause men never do that (women, bet you never heard that one before), I try to figure out what it is that's bothering me. Again, it's cause they are in my way.
That's where my gender differentiation ends. Because the common denominator is this: You are in my way, because you did not consider that THERE IS SOMEONE BEHIND YOU!
I realize you may be led to believe this is a personal rant about having to slow down (I'll go slow when they are carrying me to my grave, but now that I think about it, I'm sure my Will can say that the pallbearers have to run), but this really is not so. This is about consideration. To me, it is the single largest issue facing our society. Every society. Utopia will NEVER happen (whether it can is for another conversation) without consideration. Crime would drop, car accidents would decline, marriages would be more fulfilling, and it's a high likelihood that the planets would align and interstellar travel would become possible if people were more considerate.
Consideration is the glue that bonds us together. It's what keeps us from an anarchistic society (the merits of which will not be discussed here). I may not care about the person behind me in the aisle, but I care about society, of which he is a member. So my simply stepping aside, so he does not have to slow down, allows him to continue what he is doing without my negatively affecting him. You will note that when you have been a part of this, you'll usually hear an "pardon me", and "certainly" (if you interacted with me, that's what you'd get). This is typically a pleasant exchange done with a smile. I quite enjoy it. And I'm out of the way. That was because I "considered" what my effect is on the person behind me. More so, because I don't know if someone is behind me and I don't have eyes in the back of my head, like my mother, I simply stay to the right of the aisle. That is me being considerate. Now, if you want to go faster then me, you have plenty of room to do so without any negativity between the two of us. See how pleasant consideration makes things? Ever been stuck behind someone completely oblivious to you? It sucks. Perhaps you are in a hurry to get the flour cause your kids want to make you cookies? You need that crap NOW! What happens in your mind and stomach when you are now stuck behind someone just sauntering and taking up the whole aisle, when, if they had considered someone was behind them, they would simply step aside? You not only get frustrated at the fact that you now have an issue to address, but you get doubly frustrated because it's such a simple issue and would not have been caused but for someone's INconsideration.
Same with the road.
But people are inconsiderate. They simply, for one reason or another, fail to consider the person behind them.
So, when you step out of your house (cause you can abuse your family as much as you want, as long as I'm not in it), please take EVERY step assuming that someone is behind you waiting to get past. This will make your, and what's infinitely more important, my days a lot better. :-)
I have this syndrome. It's called, "ICantStandBeingBehindPeopleitis". Normally I don't admit that to people, but, well, there it is. It's not that I have to be ahead of everyone. I simply don't like being behind. Really, what this means is I have no need to define myself by other people's actions (I came to this conclusion when I was driving one day trying to figure out if I was Mr. Testerone or if it was something else. I concluded it was something else, because I don't need people behind me which would have pointed to Mr. T. I simply don't attend to other people who are plugging along in their own lives. I'm happy in my own warm blanket of "stay the hell out of the way").
However, many of us have been in the situation where a lady with a shopping cart is walking down the aisle in a store. Simple enough. Except when you do the math, she really is only taking up a quarter of the aisle. However, because of HOW she is taken up the aisle (walking in the middle with a gentle drift back and forth like she is bouncing between lines on the road after a late night of rum and coke), you simply can't get past her. (If you haven't been in this situation, look behind you).
Now, this isn't limited to women. But typically it's the women pushing the cart. With guys, they don't have to have a cart. They will do this with their elbows spread out and their ego filling the gaps between a doorway or an aisle. Now, I'm making some leaps here and a couple assumptions. But here goes. The woman does it because she is oblivious due to the other thoughts going through her head, such as comparisons, pricing, etc. The man does it cause his ego causes him to believe that the only matter in the world worth considering is his very next step and how the peanut butter is all the better now that he decided to travel that aisle instead down the aisle of the spaghetti (poor spaghetti).
Really, they both are doing the same damned thing. They are both in my way. When I come up against issues like this where the cause appears to be completely respective to genders (not to say that guys aren't taking up the aisle due to pricing and women aren't strutting their egoshiz, but I'm generalizing ), instead of, like some guys do, assuming that women are at fault cause men never do that (women, bet you never heard that one before), I try to figure out what it is that's bothering me. Again, it's cause they are in my way.
That's where my gender differentiation ends. Because the common denominator is this: You are in my way, because you did not consider that THERE IS SOMEONE BEHIND YOU!
I realize you may be led to believe this is a personal rant about having to slow down (I'll go slow when they are carrying me to my grave, but now that I think about it, I'm sure my Will can say that the pallbearers have to run), but this really is not so. This is about consideration. To me, it is the single largest issue facing our society. Every society. Utopia will NEVER happen (whether it can is for another conversation) without consideration. Crime would drop, car accidents would decline, marriages would be more fulfilling, and it's a high likelihood that the planets would align and interstellar travel would become possible if people were more considerate.
Consideration is the glue that bonds us together. It's what keeps us from an anarchistic society (the merits of which will not be discussed here). I may not care about the person behind me in the aisle, but I care about society, of which he is a member. So my simply stepping aside, so he does not have to slow down, allows him to continue what he is doing without my negatively affecting him. You will note that when you have been a part of this, you'll usually hear an "pardon me", and "certainly" (if you interacted with me, that's what you'd get). This is typically a pleasant exchange done with a smile. I quite enjoy it. And I'm out of the way. That was because I "considered" what my effect is on the person behind me. More so, because I don't know if someone is behind me and I don't have eyes in the back of my head, like my mother, I simply stay to the right of the aisle. That is me being considerate. Now, if you want to go faster then me, you have plenty of room to do so without any negativity between the two of us. See how pleasant consideration makes things? Ever been stuck behind someone completely oblivious to you? It sucks. Perhaps you are in a hurry to get the flour cause your kids want to make you cookies? You need that crap NOW! What happens in your mind and stomach when you are now stuck behind someone just sauntering and taking up the whole aisle, when, if they had considered someone was behind them, they would simply step aside? You not only get frustrated at the fact that you now have an issue to address, but you get doubly frustrated because it's such a simple issue and would not have been caused but for someone's INconsideration.
Same with the road.
But people are inconsiderate. They simply, for one reason or another, fail to consider the person behind them.
So, when you step out of your house (cause you can abuse your family as much as you want, as long as I'm not in it), please take EVERY step assuming that someone is behind you waiting to get past. This will make your, and what's infinitely more important, my days a lot better. :-)
I was 99.95% certain that there was nobody behind me. The .05% reservation can be blamed on a childhood spent watching horror movies, since there is no reasonable way that anybody could be standing behind me when there is a wall at my back.
ReplyDeleteLily, I too suffer from a childhood filled with horror movies. Perhaps that's where I get that heightened sensitivity to what's behind me. I was never smart enough to keep my back against the wall. However, I found one good tug on the blankets could pull a well honed sense of security and safety over my head.
ReplyDelete