I watched a middle age couple cross the street, a little over 10 years ago. It inspired this article, which I\u2019m repeating, sort of, as a PSA (public service announcement). They got out of their car, hiked to the corner, pressed the cross button, walked inside the crosswalk lines to the other side and then back to their destination, directly across the street from their car. They walked an extra block. I would have J-walked. I don\u2019t know if they were motivated by fear of getting run over, lack of confidence in their ability to look both ways, fear of getting a ticket or they just were people who stayed between the lines. <\/p>\n
The same principal is at work when it comes to walking across a lawn. Most buildings have squared off sidewalks; they look great on the architectural drawings, but if you walk around a lot, like I do, you\u2019ll notice that a squared off walkway is the longest route to a building. If you take the diagonal you get there faster. The paths worn in the grass at an angle to the walkway show that a lot of people defy the designer and travel the shortest route. Good designers take this into account; it\u2019s called the \u201chuman\u201d factor. Great designers don\u2019t bother with a walkway layout. They build the building, plant grass, and then after a few months, send in landscapers to build walkways where the grass is trampled down.<\/p>\n
This is why old coots are valuable to society. We take the short route in everything we do. The world would be a better place if the architects and engineers paid more attention to us. One of my old coot friends developed a \u201cshort route\u201d to getting dressed. He got tired of putting his belt through the loops every time he put on a different pair of pants. He went to a thrift store and bought a dozen belts. He put one in each pair of his pants. Now, when he gets dressed, he just slips on his pants and buckles up. Some old coots avoid this entirely by buying pants with elastic waistbands. This is not approved by the old coot society I belong to. Elastic waist pants are something we couldn\u2019t wait to grow out of as kids. We started down the fashion runway in short pants, then knickers (usually made of itchy wool) and then elastic waist pants. Once we moved on to \u201cbig boy\u201d pants, with belt loops, we vowed to never go back. You couldn\u2019t pay my old coot crowd to wear anything with an elastic waistband, except maybe sweat pants to workout in. The old guys you see wearing elastic around town give us old coots a bad name. <\/p>\n
The public school system would be well served if they added a new course to the curriculum. It might be called – Short Route 101<\/i>. High school students would be broken into teams and required to follow a bunch of old coots around and then meet as a discussion group to report what they observed. They\u2019d learn to take short cuts across public green spaces. And, as a bonus, they\u2019d learn to fake a language problem when it served their purpose: when challenged by a store clerk for unloading a cart full cart of groceries at a \u201cten-items-or less\u201d counter, or asked to leave an \u201cinvitation-only\u201d event to which they weren\u2019t invited, or when walking up to a closed teller window, and refusing to budge until the clerk doing paperwork cashed their check. Responding to a challenge in each case with, \u201cNo speaka da-englise.\u201d <\/p>\n
They\u2019d also learn the fine art of J-walking. Which is the safest way to cross a street these days. DOT has spent millions (wasted in my opinion) to install pedestrian crossing signals at thousands of intersections around the state, including the intersection at the junction of the Hiawatha Bridge and Route 434. The last known pedestrian to cross the street at that place was on April 7, 1996. DOT\u2019s idea of a safe crossing zone is what I call the danger zone; it\u2019s where pedestrians get run over. The right on red after stopping regulation is the culprit. People don\u2019t stop. The crossing light says go to the pedestrian, they step into the crosswalk and a car comes zooming around the corner and runs them over. Old coots cross in the middle of the block where there are no surprises. We learned to look both ways before crossing before we were five years old and that skill has served us well. Want proof? Just ask Daren Merrill; he got run down in the crosswalk at the corner of Front and Church. At what \u201cDOT safe\u201d corner are you gunna get yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I watched a middle age couple cross the street, a little over 10 years ago. It inspired this article, which I\u2019m repeating, sort of, as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\n