Basement Chronicles

Ped X-ing

"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign."

I was wondering about something the other day. Or rather, every day, considering I'm stuck waiting to cross a road near every day I go to school.

The buttons on the crosswalk. You walk up to the stoplight. You press it. The stoplight knows you're there. It cooly regards you in your sojourn, carefully considering when to signal the little white man to guide you across the road.

Walk. Repeat.

Or so we've been led to believe. For how often I'm walking to, from, away from, towards, or nowhere near my classes, I have to deal with them often enough to realize that the "walk" buttons are merely there for decoration.

Don't think so? If you ever have a spare minute, take a minute and loiter about, pace to and fro, read the newspaper, do your homework. Just don't in any way look like you intend to cross the street. I'll explain in a minute.

There is no change in the timing between when a person pushes the button and when a person doesn't. The stoplight could care less about your meager presence meakly requesting passage on the path they so ruthlessly govern. It does not serve our purpose, at least, not while we're on foot. Instead, all it is tasked with is to make sure that the combustion engines hurtling through their mark stop as per they were programmed. Stop. Start. Stop. Maybe a little flashing yellow if things get slow.

So why is there a button on the light pole? Quite simply, its to make us think we're important. We, in our hurried little waddle from one place to another, want the reassurance that we are experiencing the quickest trek possible. We can't be late. We have something terribly important to go to. Like a physics lab, where the TA of unidentified language and origin becomes irate at the slightest hint of pupil confusion. Or a programming course, of which the material you've covered thrice now, where you need be present for the in classes quizzes for which we are never graded.

So what do we do. We slam that button. That's what its there for. Let me through. Get me there. Everyone stop so I can go on. Let me keep walking so that I don't have to stand so...close to these other folks in the same predicament. How awkward this is, standing on a street corner, going the same direction. Oh yeah, I'm talking on my cell phone, nevermind, I'm too important to even be where I am right now.

I mentioned earlier that in your observations of these stoplights, don't look like you're going anywhere. Why? Well, let me tell you. If somebody sees that you didn't slam that button before they got there, there's gonna be hell to pay. They'll march right up there. They'll slam that button. They'll get all unsettled at the prospect of somebody not needing to be somewhere than where they are. Somebody's slacking. Not pulling their weight. We own this road. If we even let up for a second, these cars are gonna be ALL OVER US if we don't press that button.

Up till now you could call this little rant bullshit. And I wouldn't blame you, especially if you don't experience this on a day to day basis. But I will tell you that people have acted this way, and I can't help but find it hilarious, and somewhat saddening in a way that after a couple thousand years of civilization, we really haven't changed all that much.

The point I'd like to make is why the buttons are so big. Really, they need not be any bigger than maybe a finger. Maybe. But that's not the point of these particular buttons, I don't think. People can't just press these buttons. They must slam them with the edge of their fists so that their might might be exerted upon the otherwise uncaring system of timers and lights before them. In my walking around campus, I often walk past some of the older parts of town where the stoplights are considerably older than their mainstream counterparts. Guess what? Small buttons. Delicate. Graceful.

What has happened to our society that we can't even take time out of our busy schedules to exude the cognitive effort to accurately aim our fingers? Have we grown somehow less dextrous, despite our constant video game playing and keyboarding since the cradle? Or in our increasingly technological lives have we become so fed up with treating machines with respect that we take every effort, conscious or unconscious, to wield our mighty fists and call wrath down upon those simple machines that seek to impede us?

I don't know. I'm just a guy standing on a street corner, feeling uncomfortable in a black backpack when the sun is scorching outside. Wondering if anyone realizes how ridiculous we really are.