Buttons

As I don't drive and often find mass transit less than efficient for certain trips, I do a lot of walking. Probably I walk with a purpose other than fitness more than anyone I know, so I feel it's fair for me to consider myself something of an authority on the matter. Take my usual Thursday, for example. The nature of a public transportation grid is that it handles straight lines a lot better than it does trips that have very many turns, so you wind up with itineraries like the one that brings me to my Toastmasters meeting: a bus ride occupies the first ten or so minutes, and walking the remaining twenty. On the way back from the meeting, I tend to walk the whole way, which amounts to an hour or so.

I cross a lot of streets in this way, and most of them legally. Sometimes the 'Walk' signal is controlled automatically and you must surrender yourself to its inscrutable will. Other times, you are granted free will in the form of a button. It's been suggested that the button is often a mechanical placebo, but let's say that it does what it claims. I'll tell you what I do. I approach the intersection and locate the button. I search out any people waiting to cross from my side, and if none are there I look across to the other side for people going the other way. If there are none, I then can assume that no one has pressed the button. I then hit the button hard three times if it is of old construction, or just once if it is a newer model.

Many people can't handle such freedom. I think that the button reveals the lack of faith they have in their fellow human beings. They often will reach past some standing right there near the button to press it, as if that very person had not pressed it themselves with the intention of crossing. They evidently think that person is too lazy to press it, or that they are just hanging out there at the intersection and do not plan to cross the street at all. Worse still is when someone pressed the button in the presence of someone else who then proceeds to press it themselves. Was this second person too oblivious to notice, or were they convinced that the first person did not know how to do it right?

It's not that hard a thing to manage. That anyone should fall short is a profoundly depressing commentary. To my knowledge nothing has substantially changed about it in decades, so a recently-awakened coma victim or a bewildered man thrown forward through time should be able to grasp the process with ease. I guess I give too much credit to the average person on the street in stacking them up against those examples. At least it's encouraging to know who I'm up against in my professional endeavors.