I’m not sure how to exactly title what I’m getting at here. I do believe I am pioneering this term right where at WFPDL. It came to me one day when I went to check my mail box on the street. I left my front porch making way down my long driveway to the road where my mailbox resides. I get close and take a final deep breath as I was winded from walking the path for a good twenty seconds or so. I go to open the mailbox, take out my mail when I noticed a car is coming down the road. My body is not in the road at all… I am still in my driveway… when all of a sudden the car goes all the way into the opposite lane to pass me. There was no reason for that! That car could have easily continued down the road in the lane without coming close to hitting my rotund shell.
I chalked it up to a one time event… until the next several times I checked the mail. Then I started to notice it when at the grocery store, and the mall, and restrooms. It’s as if by being too close they will catch what I have and pack on the poundage. Perhaps it’s like when you drive and your mirrors say “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.”
Am I wrong in this? Do I actually require this unnecessarily extra wide berth? Am I taking up more space than I actually realize? Next time you’re around a whale pod watch and see… you’ll ensure they have plenty of space… in case they drop dead on you maybe?
I had one guy tell me he was trying to avoid my gravitational pull … oh, I kinda forgot that till now.
Speaking of giving a wide berth…I was at Wal-Mart the other day when I ran into this lady using one of those electric scooters that the stores provide for people who can’t get around the store on their feet. I was going up this isle looking for bacon when I noticed this lady zooming down the isle in my direction. I knew that she wouldn’t fit between by cart and the other side of the isle way so I quickly turned around and headed for the end of the isle. This poor old lady didn’t see the lady on the scooter coming towards her and that is when things went to hell. First let me describe the scooter lady. She had that orange hair that you can see through to the scalp and it was all puffed up like Peg in “All My Children”. She had bright red lipstick and those real long fake fingernails. She was wearing a t-shirt big enough to pass as a two person cow costume that had a saying on the front that read “Skinny People…” I couldn’t read the rest because her mammoth boobs covered the writing. She wore these tight blue shorts that made her legs each look like a Pillsbury Dough Boy. You know, roll after roll of fat from her thighs to her ankles. Her tummy filled the little basket in the front of the scooter. Now here is when the trouble began. Her ass cheeks hung over on each side of the scooter seat so far that when she went to pass the old lady with the cart the scooter lady got wedged between the old lady’s cart and the merchandise on the side of the isle. Scooter lady would try to go forward then backward, forward then backward, nothing seemed to work. The more she tried to get loose the worse things got. Her ass cheeks began to scrape against the merchandise and started to knock stuff off the shelves. First she knocked off some mustard jars and they broke and spilled all over the floor. Then she hit some jars of pickles and they hit the floor. The worst thing was when she knocked over about six or eight bottles of syrup. Her scooter couldn’t even move because her wheels were stuck to the floor because of all the sticky, gooey syrup. The lady couldn’t get out of her scooter and no one could move the old lady’s cart to free the scooter lady. Soon I heard over the intercom “Could we have a lawn tractor from the garden department to isle three please”. They ended up putting a chain on the lady’s scooter and pulling her free with the garden tractor. They pulled her right out to the parking lot to her little bus with a wheel chair lift that was waiting to take her back home. You had to see this whole thing to believe it.
I always learned that it is proper driving etiquette to give pedestrians and bikers a wide berth, so as not to blast them with a whoosh of air and/or gravel or make them fear for their safety.