Commuting Karma

A couple of days ago after work I had to stop at the corner of Clark and Jackson and wait for a few minutes because the police had blocked out a route for Obama's motorcade to depart from the federal building. The entire wait had to be about 5 minutes or so, but about 3 minutes into it a lady standing near me on the corner turned to a guy by her and said, "Someone else should have won the election so we wouldn't have to go through this." I was like, oh, yes, lady, someone else should have won so you would have an uninterrupted stroll to your train. Not being interrupted for a moment on one day of our lives is certainly worth another term of inept leadership. For me, if it was an inconvenience at all, that was more than compensated for by Obama waving at all of us as he went by. It was enough to put a smile on my face, and I even had a wave of rock concert euphoria where I wanted to throw my hands up in the air and yell "Woo!"...but fortunately I kept that urge in check.

On a less novel note, that same day I encountered a higher than typical number of inconsiderate fellow commuters. I was shoved two times while boarding the train to go to work -- not the "we're all trying to get on this thing at once" kind of forward-thrust shove, but the "I want to go this way and there's a person in my way, so I shall push this individual out of my way" kind of sideways shove. The kind of shove that's easily avoided by waiting about two seconds until I've naturally moved out of their path. And then on the walk from the train to the office, a guy turned the corner and became oncoming traffic, only he decided to walk on the side of the sidewalk where everyone's going in the opposite direction from him. His solution wasn't to move over to where the traffic was flowing the same way as him -- it was to grimace at me and wave me out of his way with annoyance. I just don't get it, rude people. We're all trying to get somewhere, what's with the jolt of jerkiness to start the day?

But maybe it was my price to pay to get a wave out an SUV window from our soon-to-be President.