Attention porcyclists, steamrollers, and wheelchariots of fire: I made this one just for you Y
Look, I understand. You're respectively: actively healthy, you have babies who need to see the outside world every day even when you're tired and stressed out, and you need to transport your body even though your legs don't work--- I salute you!
But you're also in charge of a vehicle that's rigid hard, and can hurt human bodies if you bump into one!
Seriously, just because there is no engine in your machine, it doesn't mean you need not be as careful as you'd be were you driving a car or motorcycle!
Yesterday, coming out of a store, about to cross the street, I saw a car coming, so naturally I stopped, since I was not at the pedestrian crossing. It kindly stopped for me, as Death did for Emily Dickinson, at which point I waved my unemcumbered right hand to paralinguistically thank the humanist on wheels when, suddenly, as if Thor himself had come down from on high. KAPOW!
"I'm hit, I'm hit! Human down, human down!" Ok. I'm being a hyperbolic fiend. But yes I was hit. It could have been ugly. The panhandler in front of the shop yelled out "Attention!", so I froze in place. I was almost run over by a Man on WheelSteroids in the Mecca of the Bicycle. Not Amsterdamage. In Amsterdam cyclists ride at a normal speed. Oui, France! Land of the Tour de Force de France. His body hit me.
Hand on Old & New Testament, the Qu'ran, and any sacred and propane text you want to put under my palm, this monsieur was going faster than the spawn of SpeedyGonzales and the Roadrunner. And do you know why? Because he is Healthier, and thus Better, than thou -- and than I, ai, ai! But it hurt! What, what, what makes him think he can go at 40Km/h on a bicycle and take the tiny wee narrow corridor between cars and, well, pedestrians like me, when, I am certain, had he been behind the wheel of a car, he'd never ever do it?
Then, the other month... okay, it was last year, but so what? Last year, I was in Monoprix, buying shampoo, (2 for price of 1, delicious scent, really -- chestnut!) and I'm standing in the kilometric queue when PHLOP! My right ankle is viciously nicked by a wheelchariot of fire. It was NOT, i repeat, NOT the disabled person's fault, because her vehicle was being manned by a woman, whom I can only presume to be an absolute relative of the seated lady. She didn't think it was worth getting too worked up about the fact that now there's an unfashionable dot of blood on my ankle, making me look like I am metamorphosing into a ladybug, which suddenly, just now, makes me think would be uberly cool. She raised her eyebrows & shoulders, like synchronized water ballerinas, into a Gallic shrug and said, in a soft, almost inaudible, irritatingly nonchalant tone, "désolée."
Yah? *I* am désolée. Me.
And I am even more days olé when it is a StrollerSteamroller straight out of Rosemary's Baby coming my way, as if channelling a demonic supermarket trolley. Do ppl become blind when theyre pushing a stroller? Suddenly, all these women discover a somehow heretofore unknown right to drive a large object on wheels into total strangers in broad daylight! No swerving, no stopping. It is Stroller vs Bodies. I feel like the zombies videogame heroes must kill. We can guess who wins. This happens all the time in Paris, a city where only infants are adored more than yippie dogs in sweaters being carried around in LouisVuitton bags the size of a large melon at €1060 a pop per poodle. This tshirt exists: 
Need I elaborate further? (Yah okay it may be cute, cute as long as it isn't steamrolling over you.)
Need I elaborate further? (Yah okay it may be cute, cute as long as it isn't steamrolling over you.)
Already these ppl get all manner of provisos for their circumstances, as they should get. I like to see ppl porcycling instead of driving, and I want to see both wheelchariots and steamrollers get a reserved space on public transportation and other public places. It is necessary, right, proper, civilized and good! You should get each and every single one of these rights to come and go acknowledged and respected.
But that does not mean you get to break basic, essential, though sometimes tacit, understandings of savoir vivre and just, well, common decency. You just don't push your stroller into ppl, ok? You don't. You have no idea what kind of crazy bastard deranged git lowgrade forehead you may be pushing it into, and next thing you know your baby may be caught in a problematic situation with you. Ppl with strollers, understand something: you need to think about the infants' safety, not just your own; not just your right to get onto the bus first, to be first in the queue, to be the Monarch on Coronation Day walking down filthy Parisian pavements as if they were the red carpet. A stroller is hardly the Pope-mobile; it can hurt ppl though. But the little human in the stroller can also be harmed. Think, for chupacabra's sake.
And cyclists. It is stupidiotic, okay? it is, to think that you can be that healthy and charming and urbane on a cycle going at 40Km/h and not pause to consider you may fall off it and break your stupid head filled with breezy Parisian fumes. Inline skaters, too. All this applies to you as well. I don't have eyes at the back of my head so don't creep up on me from behind because I may have to move and now you're flat on the floor like a dragonfly on the windshield of a convertible Jaguar in the Autobahn. Imbeciles!
Okay, when it comes to wheelchairiots I won't say much. I'll say something to those who push them. Come on, be civilized! Your relative gets to ride the bus because people are civilized and demand wheelchairs have a special ramp put on buses, or that the bus be equipped with those up-and-downy thingies that South Central Los Angeles Latino and Black gangsters have under the cars! We all pay for that, so please, be courteous. Don't assault me.
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