Is it morally wrong to kill a texter?
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
As we’ve all learned in the past decade or so, the streets are now full of zombies.
By which I don’t mean the living dead who feast on human flesh, but individuals so lost in their electronic gizmos they’re oblivious to the world around them.
There’s not much you can do about the ones who drive their cars, boats or airplanes into you while texting, game-playing, podcast-listening or arguing with their spouse. They will take their toll. Many of us will die. And with any luck, a few of them.
But the pedestrian somnambulists are vulnerable. They’re slow, they’re blind and deaf and best of all, they’re curiously acquiescent.
So when one of them is walking into you, blocking a door or clogging a narrow sidewalk, you can at least work off some of your rage. Multi-tasking is an egregious myth, you know. Human consciousness is not easily divided. Which means you can say anything to them, anything at all, and they do not hear you.
I myself have done this. Softly at first. Then louder. They just don’t hear. Their head is elsewhere.
Most of the time, we’re constrained from calling assholes assholes by the quite reasonable fear that the asshole in question might take umbrage and cause us bodily harm. We have to swallow our righteous wrath. Not good for us. Ask any shrink.
But say a zombie bumps into you and you proclaim, “Get the fuck away from me, you loathsome fucking dickwad moron,” or words to that effect. No retribution will ensue, not even an evil eye. I guarantee it. And you will feel better.
It doesn’t stop there, either. Only recently, I’ve discovered that you can also touch the asshole without consequence. You can give him a little push as you hurl your imprecation. He is so distracted, he will obediently, unconsciously, move in the direction you wish, like a sheep being nipped at by a border collie.
So far I’ve only used this power to propel these slugs out of my way.
But it strikes me that the discovery has great potential, given the proper circumstances. I mean, say there’s an open manhole nearby or an onrushing bus…
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In downtown Chicago, I’ve seen people literally read novels while walking down the street (I’ve seen news coverage of this bizarre phenomenon too but couldn’t find a link). Yet another breed of zombie to, say, nudge toward a quickly-revolving door.
Depends on the novel. Mitch Albom, for intstance, definite nudge.
In response to another comment. See in context »Very true. I would probably grudgingly tolerate a Jane Austen or Khaled Hosseini reader. But the mischief-making side of me may “accidentally” stick a foot out for anyone holding anything written by anyone who’s ever been a Fox News pundit ever. It’s just the right thing to do.
In response to another comment. See in context »When I was in Tokyo, I once rode a train where the necks of the four immediate people around me were all tilted down at the same angle staring at their cellphones or video game things. They were silent for about 20 minutes. It was terrifying. (Although as to the point about reading books: Some of them might have been looking at the popular cellphone novels written by Japanese teenage girls.)
Oh, all you spoilt city kids! Just imagine how much worse it is when, in some out-of-the-way burb like Waltham, MA, or Danville, PA, you’re crossing a mall parking lot to or from your car, and there are three cars converging on a parking space near your personal “20″ (remember citizens’ band radio?), they’re turning the wheel with one hand while the cell-phone is in the other–and they don’t even have a “speed-steer” crank-ball mounted on their wheel.
Or you’re in a car, navigating the crazy streets of downtown Boston & the car ahead of you, with cell-phone-grafted ear, is slowing, partly turning (oops, One Way Street!), speeding up, slowing, turning (oops, another one-way street) for several “blocks” (we don’t really have blocks in Boston; they’re not even really polygons, as perhaps only one of five or three or six sides are straight. Whaddya call that? A polygon in need of a colonic?)
I did have a classmate in collitch who, perhaps because he was only about 5′2″–low center of gravity, always walked, between classes, on the main quad’s granite curbstones–reading a book. No cuts for intersections, so that made it easier, I suppose, but in 4 years I never saw him slip, trip, falter or fall. And he was walking at a brisk pace.