I have yet to meet a squirrel — yes, I do mean your typical tree-climbing, nut-eating, garden-variety squirrel — who is even remotely proficient at math. More specifically, geometry.
Anyone smarter than a 5th-grader knows (and according to television, 5th grade is apparently the new measuring stick for intelligence) the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Squirrels have never figured this out. I am willing to overlook their jaywalking, but must they always pause in the middle of the street to do their acrobatics, right in front of my truck? Scamper, freeze, half spin left, half spin right, freeze, backflip, freeze, retreat. It is from their very indecisiveness that we have morphed the word “squirrely.”
Oddly enough, we humans are sometimes no better at crossing the street than a bushy-tailed rodent, so much so that I am starting to wonder if we evolved from the squirrel instead of the ape.
The unsure pedestrian is easy to spot at a busy traffic intersection, that should- I-go-now look on his face, eyes darting in all directions, calculating the odds instead of trusting or even knowing how to read the traffic of pedestrian signal, attempting one or two false starts only to retreat in search of the crosswalk button (though I remain skeptical that pushing the button repeatedly makes the signal turn any faster).
It is usually inexperience — no crime in that, and even forgivable in most instances. Also the young, the old, the worker hopping on a city bus for the first time and needing to catch another bus across the street, or the immigrant new to our city or state (hence the flashing hand or walking figure instead of the words “wait” or “walk” on the pedestrian signal in hopes that at least the language barrier has been removed).
Pedestrians could be relatives or tourists visiting from a small town where crossing the street is inherently safer and easier. I confess that I had never seen diagonal crosswalks like the ones in downtown Denver — an example of the same geometry principle that has eluded the squirrel — until I moved here myself, the games of checkers and tic-tac-toe being the only diagonal movements known to exist in the one-stoplight town I hail from.
Less forgivable is the defiant one, the pedestrian behind the sunglasses and headphones who knows she has the legal right of way and crosses the street when and where she feels like it, at her own pace and peril.
It’s not that pedestrians don’t have a couple of demands for drivers. Besides the obvious wish to not be struck by a vehicle, nothing shouts righteous indignation like the drivers who infringe the boundaries of the painted pedestrian crosswalk with their vehicles at the red light.
Who hasn’t witnessed or been on the receiving end of the stare-down or the trash talk, or worse, from the pedestrian forced to walk even a few inches around the offending vehicle. For at least the few seconds it takes to cross the street, the one steering the shopping cart is on equal footing with the one steering the Lexus.
Sometimes even when all the rules are followed, at the very least by the pedestrian, there can be accidents resulting in injury or even loss of life, death always impartial to blame. If you have lost a loved one in such a way, know that many hearts, including mine, break with yours.
So let’s all be extra careful out there, especially behind the wheel. And watch out for the squirrels, too, because remember, some of them are now walking upright.
Marty Likens (martylikens@peoplepc.com) works for Shamrock Foods of Commerce City.
