So my spouse and I are walking back to the parking garage after a dinner out this week, and we encounter two young women standing in the middle of the sidewalk, chatting. Although we approach to within a couple of feet, neither of the women sees fit to move. I say, “Excuse us!” which does get their attention — but they respond not by stepping to one side so that we may pass, but by huddling a bit closer to each other in the middle of the sidewalk. This forces my spouse to pass them to their left while I go to the right.
Is it just me, or is oblivious the new pandemic? It certainly seems to be infectious.
Last weekend, while we were at a Hampton Inn in Ohio, I went to the breakfast area to make some toast to take to our room. A young man stood in front of the empty toaster, dutifully spreading cream cheese on his toasted bagel. I opened the bread keeper (right next to the toaster), tong-extracted a slice of whole wheat, and then stood a few socially-distanced feet away. The guy didn’t move, or even look up. I waited another respectful 10-15 seconds. Scrape, scrape, scrape went the plastic knife. I finally circled around the counter, dropped my slice in the toaster slot, and reached around the toaster to push the lever down. This, at last, served to elicit an “oh sorry” from the guy — but he still didn’t step away from the toaster until every smidgen* of his cream cheese had been spread.
I suppose I could have said “Excuse me!” in this situation as well, but why did I need to? Where are other people’s awareness skills? Are they no longer obligated to use them?
A few days before that, I was driving through a shopping/residential area on my way out of our neighborhood. As I approached the four-way stop, I had to pull up behind two cars whose drivers were having a window-to-window conversation, blocking both of the lanes. I sat there about a minute patiently waiting for them to finish. I didn’t tap my horn, but I was just about to.
I understand that car-to-car convos are the norm in some neighborhoods, and impatience with such is not welcome there. But this isn’t one of those neighborhoods. What may be street culture elsewhere was simple obliviousness here.
I am almost always looking around for someone I may be inconveniencing, as if points are awarded for Most Considerate Citizen. And whenever we are at a bar, my spouse keeps an eye on the empty barstools, ready to offer to switch seats to accommodate a larger party.
Are we throwbacks? I’m beginning to think so.
I am undecided whether rampant obliviousness is a product of phone-app absorption or the natural result of the internet’s distance and anonymity seeping into our everyday lives. Probably much of both. Either way, I keep waiting, waiting, for the other guy to look up, see me, and think of something other than the continued pursuit of his own agenda.
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* What exactly would you call the last bit of cream cheese in a packet, besides smidgen? Morsel implies something crumbled or piecewise, as does speck. Pinch and dash are for powders or granules, and drop is for liquids. Ounce is a relatively large quantity for cream cheese, and dab sounds too soft and buttery. Whatever word we choose should convey the notion that it takes forever for oblivious people to spread it.
Rainy Evening in Bordeaux (2014)
You may have heard of Madison Cawthorn, 26, the man who currently “represents” those who live in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, which includes me. Our district is not very diverse (86% white) and not overly educated (about 25% have a college degree vs. 35% nationally). Consequently, people like Mark Meadows (you may have heard of him too) and Madison Cawthorn typically have a smooth ride to Congress from these parts.
But this election year, our district’s borders have been redrawn, which — combined with Cawthorn’s well-publicized travails — has attracted a number of challengers for his seat. That means a Republican primary looms, with Cawthorn trying to fend off his main rival, State Senator and NRA member Chuck Edwards. Edwards, owner of several McDonalds in the area, is the self-proclaimed champion of “mountain values” which in our mountains implies opposition to “open borders” (read Hispanic immigration), “liberal energy and climate change experiments” and, of course, Critical Race Theory.
Though Cawthorn leads in the polls, Edwards’ challenge has led Cawthorn to try to induce amnesia in mountain voters. He wants us to forget: his support for the January 6 rioters; his disdain for Ukraine’s “thug” president; his attempt to board a plane with a loaded gun in his carry-on; his driving with a revoked license, twice; his alleged invitation to orgies in the capital; his twisting the stories of the car crash that crippled him and his rejection by the Naval Academy. You can look it all up — the internet remembers even if voters forget.
Cawthorn’s amnesia strategy involves something I don’t recall him doing explicitly in his 2020 campaign, that is, using his handicapped status to pander to voters. While Cawthorn did use his car crash as a false excuse for not attending Naval Academy, that seemed more like lying than sympathy-seeking. But one look at this Cawthorn campaign sign installed on the median of US 25/70 near Weaverville shows that he has now gone full-tilt pander:
Cawthorn’s new primary campaign symbol is not a flag — or a cracked Capitol dome — but a white man in a wheelchair. Who could vote against “Ironside” Cawthorn, the white man in the wheelchair?
Surely, a white man in a wheelchair had to surmount many more life-challenges than, say, an ordinary Joe (or Chuck in this case) who went from flipping burgers to owning his own chain of McDonalds. At least that’s the message I think Cawthorn wants to sell us here.
I hope Cawthorn does win the Republican primary, as I believe that a Democrat would fare better against him than against other Republicans in November. My premise is, Cawthorn will lose more votes due to the wing-nut factor than he stands to gain as a Trump suck-up or as a pitiful — but not pitied — young man.
On the other hand, one should never underestimate the power of mountain values in the little state I live in.