A Guide To The Jaywalkers Of Urban Arizona and California

I like to think that my parents raised me well. Certainly in most respects they did as well as it is possible to do, and cannot be held responsible for the lessons they imparted to me that did not take. Some of them did take, however. I may not have learned from my father how to work with my hands, but I learned from them both about the arts. I may not be the best in terms of employing "inside voice", but I know how to cross the street. Other people cannot, and I must assume that they successfully learned from their parents the lessons that I did not, or else I can't imagine how they make their way in the world.

It's really not so difficult to cross the street. You walk along on the sidewalk until you come to a crosswalk. You press the button if there is one, or else wait for the "walk" signal to come on its own. When it does, you walk across alertly and with a brisk pace. Often, there is a great distance in between two lights, so it pays to be aware and cross at the earliest opportunity instead of waiting until you get to where the place you're going to is. Now, I'm only human, so sometimes I don't do that so well. That brings us to how to jaywalk and how not to.

It should go without saying that you really must be careful. You have the watch the pattern of traffic as it ebbs and flows with the cycling of distant traffic lights. There will be a phase where traffic rushes by in both directions, then one only, then the other, and then neither. That final phase is when you sprint across like a bat out of hell. Ideally, no car will even come near until well after you have safely reached the far sidewalk. The few Phoenicians who must walk around on any kind of regular basis find they must jaywalk now and then, and know how to do it. The same was true in Chicago, as I recall. In Los Angeles, it is one of the worst failings of local culture that they are hopelessly bad at jaywalking.

Now, it mostly pays in life to be bold. "Fortune favors the bold", as the old expression goes. It does not, however, behoove the mouse to be bold in the face of the cat. Rather, he ought to favor discretion and expediency. So it is with Los Angeles jaywalkers. I spoke of waiting for the slow phase of the traffic cycle. Many don't do that here. They just charge out into the street in the face of traffic just yards away, defying cars to hit them. The don't even wait until there is a gap of even a split second, understand- they weave in between moving vehicles until the remainder stop out of stark terror.

That's not even the worst of it. It's bad enough when they're just walking. Imagine the same behavior when they're carrying something heavy. I personally witnessed someone carrying a big, heavy metal bed frame, and doing exactly what I just described. To do that, it takes the kind of gall that they would love to study in university behavioral science labs. I witness such acts all the time and become less sanguine about humanity's future every day. Only such things as frozen yogurt and DVRs pull me back from the brink.