I have enough trouble walking down Cambridge’s narrow brick sidewalks. I am wildly uncoordinated, often stumbling over errantly laid bricks and occasionally slipping off the curb into oncoming traffic.
Recently, as I walked back to Eliot, I turned my head to see a Facilities Maintenance Operations (FMO) truck headed down the street. A la Dionne “Dee” Davenport from “Clueless,” I was unable to turn my head without moving my entire body and, of course, tripped into the road. The patient gentleman behind the wheel gave me a suspicious look, shook his head, released a sigh that was audible through the car window, and gestured for me to cross.
But I am not the worst menace on Cambridge’s chancy sidewalks. That distinction is reserved for the sidewalk blockers. These are groups of two or more pedestrians who choose to walk abreast instead of single file when I’m already 10 minutes late for class and are walking so slowly behind them that I might actually be walking backwards.
I clear my throat. I tailgate closely. And yet the girl with a faux-fur vest—who looks like a beaver has mounted her—will not move to the right.
I sigh loudly, much like the FMO driver, and finally the kid sporting deuce collared shirts turns his head and flares his nostrils as though I am the biggest inconvenience to him since they stopped showing “90210” on FX. He moves over approximately six inches, and I squeeze by, inevitably bumping into a parking meter.
Normal pedestrians in the country’s biggests cities (like Branson, Mo.) have the common sense to step aside when someone is coming up behind them. But some Harvard students, yet again, think they are exempt from the conventions of the real world.
So next time, after reading this, don’t pretend like you don’t hear me coming. As if.
