I will cross the street anywhere no matter what direction the traffic is going. Walking my short jaunt home today, I realized that if I were in Seattle, I'd have been arrested numerous times within the .25mi that I walked today (yes, I'm an American - I don't do metric) - and that's a shorter walk than normal due to getting a lift part way.
I avoided crosswalks. When I was crossing at a crosswalk I never saw "the green man" - always the red man - although I think there was a hint of yellow at the second of the two crosswalks I managed to cross.
It's so sad that I've timed my walk to the best crosswalks on the way to the Luas in the morning... and on the way home in the evening there are certain ways that I've noticed are faster - including one crosswalk that you'd never expect to be so short because it's got 2 islands to pass over.
So when I arrived here, ironically I was confused as to which way to look before crossing the street. Now I look and walk without fear and, in Seattle, they arrest for that sort of behavior. So, when I get back to the US and get arrested for jaywalking, who will take my phonecall to pay my bail?
5 comments:
Reclaim the streets anyway — they were originally put there for people — not just cars!
I'll take the phonecall — no problem. And I can promise to try not to laugh!
(really, how bad can the penalty be for crossing when or where 'they' say you shouldn't? I would have expected the worst possible penalty to be the 'ultimate' one — getting flattened by a bus! (and our own sense of self-preservation should guard us against that, at least a little!))
True true true - and I have nothing personally against jaywalking... but Washington state does: depending on where you get ticketed, it can count against your car insurance if you're a driver. Do not ask me how that's legal - I do not know. But it was on my written test that I took when I got my WA state driver's license.
And I think I'd call you if I was able to call international just to wake you up when I decided to jaywalk at 1900PST. Now there's friendship for you!!
*grins*
:p even if you were in prison, I'd at least expect you to know what the 'real' time was (PST? what's that?). So you're welcome to try to wake me up at any time; if I don't put advance countermeasures in place, I can sleep through most noisy things.
Remember never to get an alarm clock that sounds like a telephone — I had one such alarm clock once and if the phone rang in the middle of the night, instinctive reaction was to turn off the alarm clock. Then when proper waking-up time came, there was no alarm. Oops.
Irish blokes are so weird. All uppity and stuff.
And that does sound like a challenge to wake you up - although I'm always up for a challenge. I still don't think though that waking you up would gt me bailed outta jail. So maybe I'll try that when I'm not in need of help.
Why did your alarm clock sound like a phone? There's something that seems intrinsically wrong with that idea. I'd grow to hate my phone. I'm very Pavlovian when it comes to alarm clocks and work-related beeping (as you may have noticed).
Some of them aren't weird, I hear, but the only non-weird ones I've met all seemed a little... strange.
Sure, waking up anybody might not get you out of jail, but it might get the ball rolling. In particular (assuming you're permitted something like one phone call) you can say something like 'call these people; they all have loads of money, live near the jail, and will come and bail me out, even if they only have €4.00 each'
You're very Pavlovian. :p
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