We've had unseasonably warm weather the past few days! Sunny, warm (well, 60 degrees). It's a taste of late March in early February. With nice weather it brings people out, and unfortunately not everyone is on the up and up of proper public behavior.
One of my big pet peeves is door etiquette. It seems common sense to me that if two people approach a door at the same time, one person inside trying to leave, the other outside trying to enter, that the person leaving has the right of way. Otherwise the person entering will be crowding inside and possibly blocking the person trying to leave. Yet it seems people rarely follow the logic of this and just barrel through the door disregarding the other person. I'm often pushing a stroller which brings up another inconsiderate act - people blocking you or not helping. I'd say only about 20% of people will hold doors for me when I'm coming along with a stroller. The other 80% of people are either oblivious, rushing by in a hurry, or they're looking at their smart phone too intently to notice. I don't expect everyone out there to hold doors for me, but I do find it kind of sad that so few people actually do. I'm a pro at backing through doors so I can hold the door open for myself to get my stroller through.
Now, moving on to park etiquette. The past two days I've enjoyed pounding the pavement with an outdoor run around the lake. We are lucky to live half a mile away from one of the most popular parks in the city. It has a 3 mile path around the lake, a giant playground, and cute restaurants and shops lining the surrounding streets. One thing I hate when I am out for a fresh air jog is people smoking on the pathway. WTF? As I'm huffing and puffing for oxygen during my jog, I nearly have an asthma attack when I encounter smokers along the way. Ugh, so gross. I know, smokers have rights too, yada, yada, but when their nasty habit infringes upon me and my right to fresh air, I have little sympathy for their rights.
The other issue I have with the path is that so many people just aimlessly walk along with little care for those around them. The pathway is about 8 feet wide, with 4 feet for walkers/runners, and 4 feet for bikers/skaters. It seems to me that common sense would dictate that walkers should stay on the outside edge of the foot traffic lane, with runners taking the inside part of the lane that borders the bike lane. Since the runners are moving faster, that way they can dart into the bike lane if need be to get around slow walkers. However, I find that instead you get tons of people who aimlessly walk in the center of the path. Or you get the pack of ladies who are walking side by side taking up the whole path and leaving little room for runners to squeeze by. Today I had a woman drift right in front of my 6 MPH stroller while she txt'd while walking. I nearly hit her and only had a second to dodge her (while pushing 75 lbs of stroller and toddlers). It could have ended very badly had I not been able to dodge her at the speed I was going.
As a reward to the kiddos for being so good in the stroller during my jog, I let them play on the playground afterwards. The playground was PACKED. It took major effort on my part to keep an eagle eye on both kids and to keep them safe. At one point the kids were climbing up the stairs to the big slide only to have a bigger kid (maybe 4?) standing at the top blocking anyone from getting by and meanly trying to kick kids that were waiting to get past. I don't know where that kids parent was, but I suspect it was one of the hordes of parents sitting on the benches playing with their iPhones.
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