On People Who Walk Right Into You

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it '
Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo - Macarthur Park

Here I stand; I can do no other. - Martin Luther, 1521

"That breakup text can wait," captions the traffic-safety poster on the bus stop shelter. But there's no waiting for the plague of millennials on their cell phones who seem to be perpetually on the move on Manhattan's sidewalks.

I have a new tactic. I no longer dodge them; I no longer veer to the right to give way. Nor do I stick to my path, and hope they will look up in time not to bump into me.

There's a trick to it, you see. If you keep to your path, you will automatically move at that last nana second. It's human nature. So I just come to a complete halt. This way I can steady myself and won't be knocked over.

I just stand perfectly still. At first I tried this technique as an experiment - to see when the cell-phone person would realize someone was coming towards them.

Apparently there's an app you can get that advises you when there is an on-coming pedestrian. Of course there's no market for it, because the cell phone people want YOU to move out of the way. Otherwise they'd be looking up in the first place. My stand-still tactic works. Really well. It is now my modus operandi.

There are three responses. Most of the cell-phone texters look up at the last minute and THEY move, without a murmur. About twenty percent complain saying silly things like, "Why can't you move, there's plenty of room?" Such people only serve to make my decision more resolute.

About five percent keep walking. They don't realize that other people exist. And they certainly don't realize that they are about to come across a baby-boomer. My formative years were spent  in demonstrations. Walking down St Kilda Road in Melbourne with 10,000 like-minded people. Braving police people on horses. Stopping for no man. Or woman. A Manhattan millennial on a cell phone is nothing in comparison.

I like to think I am passively resisting. Gandhi-like I make my stand. I'm not going anywhere! " One two three four, we don't want..."  etc.

Mad Men Street Manhattan  © G Chen

Casualties are minor. But as in any war, even peaceful ones, there can be collateral damage. Like last week on Third when I spotted a millennial iPhone person bearing down on me. She was one of the worst kind. Not only was she texting, but she was wired for sound. Sightless and completely deaf - a Hellen Keller of the twenty first century. I braced myself. I stood my ground. She flew straight into me. Taken by surprise she threw her hands in the air. I watched astonished as her silver iPhone 6 flew heavenward. The sun glinted on it as it reached the zenith of its trajectory and hurtled to the ground.

We both stood. Staring at the shattered thing. A sad thing. Deprived of life. The gleam of its silver casing gone, a dead thing. 

I felt mean. She looked at me, waiting. Was I meant to say something? Like time during a car crash, the moment seemed to go on for an eternity. I stayed, expecting her to pick up her phone. I think her ear buds were still playing the last of her iPhone's songs. The final refrain as the umbilical detached and the dead phone lay on the ground.

I couldn't stand the silence, so broke it with, "Not a good idea," and hurried on.

Back in my apartment that evening, I poured a wine and turned on the TV to blot out the stresses of the day.

Watching the news. CNN with its garish almost psychedelic background sets that move disconcertingly as you try to focus on the anchor of the moment. What the hell was he saying? Some bakers in Arkansas protesting that they don't want to bake cakes for gay people?

Seriously?