154 over 88...why?

One: I’m zipping through Cambridge on my way to work. I’ve cleared the first bottleneck in Harvard Square, and am on my way to the second, at the Fresh Pond rotaries where Alewife Parkway connects into Route 2, the one and only decent highway in the greater Boston area. I’m coming up on a private school a few blocks up from Harvard when from out of nowhere a crossing guard saunters half-heartedly into the street from the other side and makes like maybe he’d like me to stop. Realizing a second later that yes, this old fool is for real, I slam on the brakes and come to screeching halt just a few feet short of the crosswalk, where a guy in an expensive looking overcoat is waiting to cross with his little girl. They start across and for half a second I almost feel guilty, but then dad shoots me a dirty look that instantly says “you weren’t gonna stop, where you punk? I pay more per year for my little girl to go to this school than your damn POS car is worth.” The old crossing guard gives me a look too, like he’s sick of all the reckless hooligans like me who refuse to accept that roads are just there for pedestrians to cross. Because of course Cambridge is the sort of place where you don’t really need a car, and having one is a crime against humanity. Like it’s somehow my fault that some people have to drive to work. This crosswalk is fifty feet from a red light, which I just sat at for two minutes waiting my turn. They could have held off for another thirty seconds and the light would have gone red again, so they could cross safe and sound without interfering with traffic, but daddy probably had somewhere important to be and that old indecisive excuse for a crossing guard probably felt like he should earn whatever the private school people are paying him. Have a nice day.

Two: Another morning commute through Cambridge, this time at the series of stoplights that feeds into Route 2. I’m in the right lane, coming up on the second of the lights as it’s turning yellow, so I stop – no need to push through, it’s a chain of lights, so I’ll just end up sitting at the next one. I settle to a halt as the light turns red when ZOOM! A silver flash blasts by me on the left and comes to a screeching halt on the other side of the intersection, where traffic is backed up. Nice move, dude – so you’re sitting in traffic on the other side of the light, big accomplishment. Okay, whatever. Two lights later, I’m even with this guy again, and the same thing happens: the light turns yellow, I stop, he goes blasting through the red only to be forced to a screeching halt just on the other side of the intersection because traffic is (gasp) still backed up. Sure enough, a few minutes later we’re even yet again, but when we finally clear the last light and get onto the highway, he really opens up: he slides over to the fast lane and floors it, zipping off at like 80 or 85. Which you sure can’t get away with on 128 on a holiday weekend, but which is apparently ok on Route 2 on an average weekday morning…never a cop in sight when you want one. Who knows…maybe he was late for work, maybe he was rushing a donor organ to a transport team, maybe he just had somewhere to be. Or maybe he was just another overaggressive jerk from New England.

Three: This time it’s a Saturday, and I’m on my way home. There’s a pair of lights right around the corner from my place that is a chronic bottleneck: they’re incredibly poorly timed, and traffic often backs up for blocks. I’m passing through the first of them when I have to slam on the brakes in the middle of the intersection because the idiot in front of me has stopped for no obvious reason. It takes a second, but I finally realize why…there’s a woman standing on the corner, looking kind of lost, and he thinks she wants to cross. Never mind that we have the green light and she has the “do not cross” sign, never mind that she’s not even in the crosswalk, never mind that she obviously is not going to cross the road, this idiot has stopped because he thinks she maybe kinda sorta looks like she might be thinking about crossing but she’s not sure which direction she wants to go. So, while she’s deciding, this guy is sitting in the middle of the intersection, holding up me and a long line of cars behind me. Maybe he thinks he’s being chivalrous; maybe he thinks because Massachusetts has a law that you have to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks that he’s obligated to stop for any old person standing on the corner, regardless of who actually has the right of way or whether they actually even want to cross at all. In any event, it quickly devolves into a classic New England encounter: I give him the horn, he gives me the finger, she stays put on the corner, and life goes on.