Today's Sightings

In the Park Panhandle: a girl with ketchup-red, waist-length hair, pushing a Papasan chair down the path in a baby carriage. This thing is SIX FEET WIDE at least, and takes up most of the path.

Moving day?

Found it abandoned on the sidewalk, and decided to bring it home?

Another Cacophony Society impromptu drive-in movie?

On Kezar: a teenage Goth, complete with eyeflop jet-black hair, black t-shirt, black shorts, and black Chuck Taylors with skulls, dribbling a basketball.

Solemnly.

There Needs To Be A Word

... for a certain kind of person. I'm sure you've met one or two. Here's an example of the kind of behavior that defines who I'm talking about: they're on an escalator, it's full of people. They can see it's full of people. The escalator gets to the top (or bottom, as the case may be). They step off.

And they just stand there.

There's an entire loaded escalator behind them, about to deliver a stream of people right into their ass. Are they even aware of this? Apparently not, because when one person after another shoves by them, they seem surprised, if not actually slightly miffed.

How is this possible? They were on the escalator, they could see all the other people. Is it because they can't see behind them? If they can't actually see something, does it simply not exist, the way we imagine that dinosaurs, with their walnut-sized brains, perceived the world?

The very same people will stand in a crowd on a subway platform, waiting for a train to arrive. When it comes, and opens its doors right in front of them, they will step through those doors into the nearly empty train, and -- you guessed it -- stand there. The train in front of them is full of space. There's a crowd of people behind them trying to get on the train. And yet, they get on and think (I'm guessing), "Gosh, this is a good spot right here," and freeze. Again, they actually seem rather annoyed as people shove into and around them.

Another MUNI-based behavior (yeah, these people are all on MUNI. What were the odds?) is picking a spot on a crowded car right next to the door. The train pulls up to a stop, the doors open, and the doorway's packed with people who do not budge. People getting off the train have to squeeze between and around them as they stand there unperturbed, with their seven pink grocery bags full of crap, noodling that ringy control-panel thing on their black iPod with the tiny Sanrio bird on a tether dangling from it. You know, I mean hypothetically.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of these people stopped their car in the middle of the freeway, got out and spread a picnic blanket. Or walked right up to the stage at a well-attended outdoor concert, and popped up a big stripey beach umbrella.

There needs to be a word for this. "Inconsiderate" is too judgemental, "clueless" isn't specific enough. I think it's a very particular mental disorder, a mild form of retardation. Maybe what we need is a Greek or Latinate sort of medical-sounding term, meaning "blind to crowds" or something like that. Xeno-somethingorother.

I'm not angry, at least not right now. They're not bad people, just deficient. They need treatment. Failing that, I wouldn't rule out institutionalization.

I was chatting with my friend Kim this morning, who's from NYC, and she was of the opinion we should pack them up and ship them there for a week. I pointed out that most of them would probably end up getting run over, or shot. "Not a problem," she responded. "I see it as culling the herd."