{"id":27572,"date":"2022-04-08T19:01:47","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T23:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=27572"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:42","slug":"the-young-and-the-oblivious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2022\/04\/the-young-and-the-oblivious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Young and The Oblivious"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\"Illustration<\/a>
\r\nSo 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.\u00a0 Although we approach to within a couple of feet, neither of the women sees fit to move.\u00a0 I\u00a0say, “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.\u00a0 This forces my spouse to pass them to their left while I go to the right.<\/p>\r\n

Is it just me, or is oblivious<\/em> the new pandemic?\u00a0 It certainly seems to be infectious.<\/p>\r\n

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.\u00a0 A young man stood in front of the empty toaster, dutifully spreading cream cheese on his toasted bagel.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The guy didn’t move, or even look up.\u00a0 I waited another respectful 10-15 seconds.\u00a0 Scrape, scrape, scrape went the plastic knife.\u00a0 I finally circled around the counter, dropped my slice in the toaster slot, and reached around the toaster to push the lever down.\u00a0 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.
\r\n
\r\nI 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?\u00a0 Are they no longer obligated to use them?<\/p>\r\n

A few days before that, I was driving through a shopping\/residential area on my way out of our neighborhood.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I sat there about a minute patiently waiting for them to finish.\u00a0 I didn’t tap my horn, but I was just about to.<\/p>\r\n

I understand that car-to-car convos are the norm in some neighborhoods, and impatience with such is not welcome there.\u00a0 But this isn’t one of those neighborhoods.\u00a0 What may be street culture elsewhere was simple obliviousness here.<\/p>\r\n

I am almost always looking around for someone I may be inconveniencing, as if points are awarded for Most Considerate Citizen.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\r\n

Are we throwbacks?\u00a0 I’m beginning to think so.<\/p>\r\n

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.\u00a0 Probably much of both.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\r\n

_______________<\/p>\r\n

* What exactly would you<\/em> call the last bit of cream cheese in a packet, besides smidgen<\/em>?\u00a0 Morsel<\/em> implies something crumbled or piecewise, as does speck<\/em>. \u00a0Pinch<\/em> and dash<\/em> are for powders or granules, and drop<\/em> is for liquids. \u00a0Ounce<\/em> is a relatively large quantity for cream cheese, and dab<\/em> sounds too soft and buttery.\u00a0\u00a0 Whatever word we choose should convey the notion that it takes forever for oblivious people to spread it.<\/h5>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 Although we approach to within a couple of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27572"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27605,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27572\/revisions\/27605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}