I came on foot to an intersection where a small street bled into a major road; a car idled in the crosswalk. The driver was trying to see around a slight curve to gauge the least dangerous time to make a left turn. He saw me and began to back up.
“That’s ok,” I told him. “I’ll go around.”
He smiled and continued to reverse out of the crosswalk. As I passed in front of him, I thanked him. Again, he smiled: “You’re welcome.”
That day must have been a good one for me because my usual reaction to drivers who block the crosswalk is anger. I mutter and rave at the inconsiderate, whose duties and destinations are so much more important than mine, so much so that they block the passage of the pedestrian. But I did rethink my arbitrary anger with regard to crosswalk intrusions: I block the walk on an almost daily basis.
The small street I live on crosses a large, busy one. When I am driving and need to make a left turn at the intersection, I pull into the crosswalk to see past shrubbery that obscures sightlines to oncoming traffic from the left. The hood of my car straddles pedestrian lanes as I crane my neck to see past the bushes. I was there once, when a man on a bicycle approached from the right. As he passed in front of my car I wanted to explain to him that I was no arrogant crosswalk-blocker, that I needed to be able to see the oncoming traffic. I realized that if he had the same attitude as I did regarding obstructers of the crosswalk, he was angry with me. My reasons for being in the crosswalk may not have been obvious to him, or important, even if they were.
I recently sent a friend an “instant message,” requesting her current address. In February 2012, I wrote of her posts about “Little Things,” the happy bits that get crushed by the greater annoyances and that often go unnoticed. She responded by saying that she was in the process of composing a “rant” about the failure of common courtesy. My IM to her made her rethink her position and try to see some positive “little thing” in the behavior she despised.
I took a trip this summer to New York City, which is full of the brisk, brusque and rude. The city bus to Harlem was overloaded when it left LaGuardia airport, and more riders crammed in at several stops. The seats were stuffed and the aisles were bulging when an elderly man entered, with halting steps. As it is on most municipal buses nationwide, a sign over the front seats directed people to yield those seats to the disabled or elderly. I was startled to see people leaping, unasked, from those packed seats. This graciousness was repeated several times more before I reached my stop.
Common courtesy is far more common than the credit we give it. Civilities are frequently exchanged and acknowledged. The man was in the crosswalk to insure a safe merge around difficult sightlines. He backed up to let me pass, a civility offered and acknowledged. And my friend, who is a “shiny, heads-up penny” for me, was able to view the inconveniences to her in a different light: the person who “won’t sit in the off-ramp lane with everyone else (but flies) past 40 cars to get in front” may have been “late to a chemo appointment for (her) son.”
If we keep civility as our social and emotional objective, we may see things in a different and better light.