man of the house

Ever look up your town on Wikipedia? Not long ago, I looked up a place I was living in and discovered what was apparently some intense rivalry between the north side of town and the south side of town. And there I was, a city slicker interloper not even knowing they HAD distinctions like "side of town" in the little bitty antique filled hamlets around my campus.

I have since moved to something more like a city. It has sidewalks here and there, a bus line, and grocery stores it doesn't take a half a tank of gas to get to. Overall, I like my new place pretty well. But having had such an enlightening experience with the prior wikisearch, on a whim tonight I decided to look up my new town. And here's something I found which is really outstanding.

On my town's wikipage, "As of the census of 2000....There were 23,197 households out of which 28.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.8% were married couples living together, 13.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.6% were non-families. 31.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.32 and the average family size was 2.93.

"13.0% had a female householder with no husband present?" My god, it's a town full of loose women. No wonder I like it.

I smacked (into) a guy on campus today. I had just come from proctoring an exam of about 13 students for an hour and a half while the professor sat at the front of the room engrossed in an article. He sat and read while I stood and walked. I kept thinking "what the hell did he need a proctor for???" About 20 minutes in, my hip decided this much standing was not ok for us to do. And then my knee got in on the action. When I finished 50 or so minutes later, I was sore and cranky on my walk back to my office. It was then that I met the fellow. He was coming down the middle of the slushy sidewalk, totally failing to acknowledge the presence of another person moving towards him. I have a problem with people who can't be bothered to exercise even that basic level of awareness which would normally cause someone to change trajectory even just a little to accomodate another non-intrusive seeming person. Especially when it's not crowded or congested and there's plenty of room for everyone to have his or her space. And very especially when the other person is walking slowly and stiffly, you know, possibly in pain or something.

I see these men get out of the way of other men. I know they do because I've tried it. I walk with a man on the inside, the fuckheads get out of the way. I walk with me on the inside, they don't. I get very sick of this shit. As I passed this fuckhead today, I didn't squeeze over into the snow drift to get out of his way. He stayed his middle of the sidewalk course and I felt his coat brush my side, the side with the bad hip. So I checked him.

For something like the 80th time, I considered getting a cane. It won't help much in the snow and I have no idea if it would make walking any less painful for me, but it would at least be a signal for people to not expect me to dance lithely around their ignorant, unaccomodating asses. And, should they fail to notice not just another person walking but another person walking with a cane, I would have something to hit them with other than my shoulder or elbow.