Why I Should Never Get Behind The Wheel Of A Car Pt. 1

I really enjoy Danny Wallace's column in the free magazine Shortlist every week. He writes about the kind of minutiae I like to muse upon myself, stuff that is normally regarded as too trivial to mention but he does, and it's funny. I can often relate to it, and today is such a day.

This week's article sees Danny exploring some of "THE BATTLES OF WITS MEN FACE ON A DAILY BASIS" and opens with his account of an incident on a street, where he becomes "frustrated because there is a person to my left who has started walking at exactly the same speed as me. It is strangely embarrassing. We are not together. Yet we look like we are together. And neither one of us wants to be the one who slows down (...) it is incredibly stressful"

YEEEEAAAAH! Geddin! Because I'm the kind of person who does that, and you want to know why? For some reason, I get more than a little annoyed when I am walking down the street and someone overtakes me.

'Why have you overtaken me?' I think crossly. 'I am a very fast walker. I was not dawdling. Did you reckon I was not walking fast enough for you to stay behind me?' and then I think 'Right. I will show YOU, Mister Speed Demon. I shall match you, pace for pace. I shall stride beside you, until you are FORCED to walk even faster, out of your comfort zone. I will show YOU how it feels to be affronted'.

I am SO PLEASED that this achieves the effect I had hoped for. Until this morning, I had thought that it was just a bit of mental one-upmanship, but now I know it works, I shall continue to let it form part of my daily battle in the pedestrian wars.