Will’s View

Being a student, I’m often wandering around with my head in the clouds, trying to figure out the latest thermodynamics problem, or thinking about what’s for dinner. Today I found myself doing just that, whilst standing behind a group of people waiting to cross the road.

I was then suddenly disturbed from my reverie by the `tink tink’ (that’s what they sound like in Australia) of the crossing indicators. Almost instinctively I started walking across the road. But alas, the noise was coming from the adjacent intersection and not the one at which I was waiting. No one had pressed the button, so the light phase had gone straight through the section dedicated to pedestrians. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, because one can normally J-walk safely across anyway. Sadly however, with this intersection this was not the case, so I had to wait through another light phase.

Sure it wasn’t much skin off my nose. Who cares about waiting through another light phase? I just went back to thinking about dinner, after pressing the crossing button for the intersection. But it got me wondering how often this actually happens. And why? I have always found it somewhat rude when someone comes up and presses the button for a crossing when I am already standing next to it. It is like they are insinuating that I am incompetent and incapable of pressing a button when I want to cross. But in this case everyone assumed that the first person had pressed the button, but they had let the side down.

Maybe we’re all justified in making sure that button is pressed. I’m not really sure. Either way I should really go cook dinner. It’s been marinating in my head all day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Purely Informative (hah). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.