This awkward incident happened on my walk into work today. A girl was riding her bike one direction, and another young lady was walking the opposite direction. Both headed for each other.
The girl walking realizes this will end badly, so she stops walking to give the girl on the bike time to adjust course and avoid a collision.
The girl on the bike slows down but doesn’t change course, continuing straight toward the girl standing right in front of her, and just before colliding, she jams on her brakes so hard her rear tire pops off the ground. She then declares to the standing lady,”You need to watch where you’re going.”
The lady replies, “I think you need to watch where YOU’RE going.”
The girl on the bike peddles away declaring, “Jesus!”
And that’s when I started chuckling out loud. And I continued chucking like that as I replayed the scene over and over.
But as I think about it, it is psychologically mundane AND fascinating. As a little boy, I would say, wow two grown ups are fighting! A little older, and I would say, “What was the girl on the bike thinking? She is nuts.” But now I wonder… does the girl on the bike truly believe herself, or was she just puffing herself up to make up for a blunder that she was too proud to accept was clearly her doing? In some way, I hope she truly believes she is right, because then at least she acted in earnest, even though I believed her assessment was incorrect.
What’s the moral of the story? Hmm… maybe “bike helmets can save your brain, but your ego is all on you.”
Or maybe, “Jesus has nothing to do with your free will, learn how to ride a bike, derp.”
Or maybe, “If your going to act like a booger on a pedestrian walkway, go take your chances on the roadway. After you get smacked by a couple cars, you will appreciate pedestrians more.”