It’s winter in Canada and we can’t help but walk down the narrow paths shovelled out of the snow. So grandstanders are a problem.
In summer and the other warmer seasons, grandstanders aren’t so bad. If they take up the whole sidewalk while lost in conversation with each other ignoring passersby, the passersby can move to the grass or otherwise move around the obstructing grandstanders. But in winter this is no longer an option.
I take a page out of basketball when those grandstanders approach in winter. I suddenly stop completely when they don’t move over on the sidewalk as expected. If they hit me and complain I’ll just ask, “Do you avoid walking into posts?” They’ll have no good comebacks to that one.
And mostly it works. After all we’ve all grown up playing basketball where if you move into someone who is still, the foul is against you. Most North Americans have an unconscious understanding of this. Still I wish I could just willy nilly pick up the rules of other sports rather than basketball.
Hockey would be fun. Imagine giving a full body check to someone who wasn’t conscious of their environment like these grandstanding pedestrians. Or football when they’re walking two abreast ahead of you and you can’t pass even though the grandstanders are walking very slowly. Wouldn’t it be fun to do a full tackle of one of the grandstanders?
Of course to do this in real life you should be big and strong enough to handle a fight with these two or more offenders.
So, despite my dreams of football and hockey, I’m just a basketballer. That sport’s approach has provoked zero sidewalk fights in my lifetime. If only there were a better, more satisfying way.
