Walking tall

'm not sure when the exact moment was that I subconsciously decided I'd had enough but it was around 10 AM this morning that I acted upon my frustration. Here's the thing - here in HK alot of the locals, for whatever reason, seem to enjoy playing "chicken" with me as I walk down the street.

See, the sidewalks here, most of them anyway, are pretty narrow and more times than I can count someone has been coming from the other direction and they just don't move. Even if I'm on the outer edge, street-side of the sidewalk and they're closer to the buildings we're walking past, they won't move to the side to accommodate me even if they have the room to manage it. So I have one of three options available to me:

1) walk straight into them sort of shoulder to shoulder
2) wait, turn sideways and let them walk by
3) step out into the street to avoid the collision and still keep moving

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't always me that took steps to avoid said collision. I mean, seriously, not once has someone attempted to move out of the way. I remember having had a bad day some weeks back and at one point looking up to the sky and saying loudly to no one in particular, "what is wrong with you people?!??!" (Of course, then I thought "did I just say 'you people'?? Hmm, hope that wasn't taken out of context".)

You know that thing where two people almost bump into each other and try to get out of each other's way but they move in the same direction where they find they're in each other's way again and then they both go in the other direction and laugh uncomfortably as they realize they've blocked each other for a third time?

Yeah, well, China's 5,000 years old and it's never happened here.

Anyway, at some point this morning while I was on my way to catch the train from Kowloon to Hong Kong station I made a conscious decision to do a little experiment. I decided to see what it would be like to be one of THOSE people. Well, closer to the truth is probably that I had just decided that enough was enough and that I was not going to be getting out of anyone's way today. At least not if they didn't show any signs of being willing to do so themselves.

So there I am ambling along and I see this guy walking toward me. I am closest to the wall and have really nowhere else to go without stopping to let him go by whereas he could just take a step to the side where there's, oh I dunno, 14 feet of subway platform at his disposal and I remember thinking "this is it".

It was that moment that I decided that this was for real and that I was really just not going to stop, not this time. I was so tired of being the one moving out of the damn way! This time I was going to get up on my warhorse and "stand my ground" so to speak. So I just kept walking. And he's getting closer and he's not moving and at some point we make eye contact and it was like some bad Hollywood western or something. Like, neither of us are going to move and we both know it and, well, "here we go" you know? You could almost hear the Clint Eastwood whistle.

Which is when our left shoulders collided and he fell to the ground. I guess I kind of walked through him rather than into him. The guy dropped like a safe. Whump!

I have to admit, it felt completely satisfying for a moment. Then I felt bad because I thought that perhaps I'd hurt the little fella. And then the Catholic guilt kicked in and I'm saying "oh, excuse me, sorry". What, as if I hadn't seen him or something?

That's the thing, though, I'm not entirely sure how sorry I am. And I have no idea how to proceed the next time I leave the house. On the one hand, the reptilian part of my brain kind of likes the whole full-contact strolling idea, and on the other hand I just want to get where I'm going without any drama.

So that's it. There's really no moral to the story or any sort of neat, tidy wrap up. Just had to get it out of my system. But if anybody has any ideas I'm all ears.......