Pedxing

 When I first visited California as an adult, without any particular inkling that I might someday move here to stay, I received a very abrupt reality check. I was driving my girlfriend's car, and as I rolled down the street, there was a sudden gasp from the passenger seat. "Stop!" she shrieked. I stomped on the brakes and the tired old Corolla did its best to comply with the command. As I attempted to get my heart out of my throat, I looked around for what must be the cause of all this excitement.

"There were people in that crosswalk!" 

"I saw them," I explained, "They didn't see me?"

I was operating on the premise that the stripes on the street were there as a guide for pedestrians who were looking for a safer place to cross. I figured that they were the ones making the educated choice about stepping out into traffic. Or not. It was not my understanding that pedestrians in California were given special dispensation for walking in front of cars. Cars that should in all circumstances stop when those on two feet were mindful enough to do their business in clearly marked paths. Or even paths that are not marked at all. Pedestrians have the right of way at all times. 

Long story short, I decided to move to California in spite of all this. It pained me, at some level, that the state was interfering with the basic principle of evolution: the survival of the fittest. 

Over the years, I have come to enjoy this level of impunity. As someone who spends a good deal of time over the course of a week running around the streets of Northern California in pursuit of exercise, I have begun to appreciate the mild freedom of stepping off the curb into traffic, knowing that I have the law on my side. 

The trouble is that not all of the drivers in the Golden State have brought my then-girlfriend-now-wife along with them. I maintain a certain level of vigilance, looking left and right and doing my best to make eye contact with drivers who might collide with me if they don't stop. Most of the time, this is sufficient, but about once a week or so, someone decides to slide on through the intersection without giving the space into which they are driving the casual glance that might keep them from using yours truly as a speed bump. Inevitably I pull up short, and duck out of the way, doing my best Ratso Rizzo impersonation, "Hey! I'm walkin' here!" 

To this they respond with an embarrassed wave and a look that suggests "my bad." And then we are both on our merry ways. Me on two legs, them on four wheels. What good are rights when you're not alive to assert them? 

I figured that's why they call them "cross walks," because when somebody carelessly drives through them somebody gets cross.