Your Body Is A Vehicle

In order to limit the scope of my argument here, let me at first state precisely what I mean: I am not concerning myself with metaphysical considerations, theological, ontological, or even aesthetic. I mean it very, very simply: your body is what you move around with.

Try and disagree. You'll find you will have a hard time disagreeing. In fact, I'd go so far as to assert it is a truism. This in mind...

Why the fuck don't people know how to use the sidewalk? Why is it considered okay for two obese people to wander down the center of the sidewalk at a middling pace and it is a traffic violation for two mack trucks to move at 14 miles an hour in a series of zigzags across 8 lanes of traffic? They are both pretty goddamned impolite. The same applies for large groups of slowly moving people that in no way acknowledge those around them trying to get by. You know, people with places to go. You will often find these same groups of people doing things such as stopping to tie their shoes in the middle of stairwells, engaging in conversations right in front of heavily traveled doors, toying with their cel phone while in a turnstyle / revolving door, and standing with one elbow right over the threshold to the elevator door, preventing it from closing, totally oblivious, until the buzzer starts going off and they sheepishly go "oh, excuse me," and step into the elevator fully, invariably treading on someone's foot. Why are these people so thoroughly unconscious of the space their body inhabits? Are their minds as vacant as their bodily grace would have us believe? Are they essentially no more than grandiose reaction machines, operating on some simple set of instructions such as "I go to class now" with no intervening higher order thought, pattern recognition, or concerns for efficiency?

I suppose not. Now excuse me while I go lay tire spikes in front of the elevator doors.