“I am the one, in order to avoid being roadkill, who must veer off … and let Monsieur Road Runner pass.”
I hate fast walkers.
As it stands today, humans have no natural predators (though any woman who has ever existed near men may feel otherwise). I often wonder if the squirrels scurrying along the grounds of a hawk-ridden park or the antelopes skipping through the Kalahari with a cheetah at their backs would gaze at us with both disgust and envy if they could: disgust, for being naked creatures that walk on our hind legs and envy, for the sweet little default pace that we apex mammals can conduct at our leisure.
Unless we’re in New York City, of course. Too many of you here are discourteous, too-fast-for-your-own-good speed-walkers. That singular moment of someone’s feet shuffling just inches behind your own on the sidewalk, sometimes for blocks at a time, is enough to make one actually buy into Eric Adams-level paranoia; at best, it’s extremely annoying! What are you running from? The ghost of Truman Capote?
I’m not (completely) stupid. This city belongs to the pedestrians, and to the pedestrians it shall remain. This isn’t Los Angeles. We have some decorum. We have unspoken pedestrian customs around here that keep the flow of traffic running in tandem with the speed of the city: keep to the right on sidewalks and staircases, stand clear of opening subway doors to allow riders off first, don’t walk three-across on the sidewalk. And yet, we haven’t quite figured out how to account for differing walking speeds, and the result is some of you behaving in unbecoming ways.
I understand New Yorkers always have somewhere to be. We are always late, held up by a Bud Light truck in the bike lane or an F train that never comes (fuck the F train, for real). We are almost always walking as a mode of transportation, rather than for leisure. But is it so necessary to walk with your toes so very close to my heels? Is it so crucial that you clip along at such a pace that, like one of my NARPy friends, your doctor notices some wear and tear on your literal achilles tendon and tells you to cool it on the length of your strides? Wouldn’t you rather walk a little slower? Smell the flowers blooming in the cigarette-infested, city-sanctioned concrete potter? And if you absolutely refuse to do so, wouldn’t it be better, for the both of us, if you sidestep a bit? Go turbo mode, just for five seconds, and gingerly slingshot around me on the sidewalk? Or better yet, can’t you look both ways, take a quick foray into the street, bypass me, and be on your merry way?
Instead, I must fight to remain in a state of zen/nonviolence as I listen to your clunky Doc Martens (they’re not broken in yet, of course, because you just bought them after that Phoebe Bridgers concert) squeak on the sidewalk centimeters behind me. Worse still is when said lurker looming over my shoulder happens to be on the phone and also happens to be very loud. Must I know what you’re cooking for dinner? (No) Must I know Jake didn’t respond when you drunk-texted him? (Sometimes!) Must I know that your roommate brought home a guy who you’d hooked up with just two weeks prior and now the vibes are off in the apartment? (Actually, yes, this is juicy enough for me to savor a little. Enunciate the names, please).
But you can imagine the state my body goes into with all of this hullabaloo going on just behind me. That’s a real fight or flight scenario. And even though I’m not the one acting out of line, creeping up on someone’s flank for minutes on end, I take the high road. I, with my leaky spine and functional scoliosis that sometimes hinders my speed (I hope you now feel like an asshole if you got mad at me during any point in this), am tasked with being the bigger person. I am the one, in order to avoid being roadkill, who must veer off, take a pause on the sidewalk, and let Monsieur Road Runner pass. Sure, in that moment I have lost the battle, but I’ll also have won the war of moral superiority. And in New York, that’s all that really matters.
—I. M. Walken-Gere
might have to write a "I hate slow walkers" rebuttal
Thank you. I hate sidewalk tailgaters almost as much as highway tailgaters and experience similar anxiety with aggro walkers nipping at my heels. I follow the California Highway Patrol guidelines for road rage: let them pass, don’t engage, don’t make eye contact.