New Brunswick — The fact that snowbanks are piled taller than the average man has apparently done nothing to deter New Brunswick’s slowest walkers from leisurely ambling three abreast down sidewalks, oblivious to more efficient pedestrians attempting to get around them.
The Manatee caught up with well-known saunterer Maureen Timmons, 44, as she was out for one of her trademark bumbling promenades in downtown Fredericton with two of her most lethargic friends. “We got wrapped up in conversation, and I guess we just didn’t notice that businesspeople and so on were trying to get around us,” she mumbled. “Why they’re in such a hurry is beyond me, though — it’s not a bloody marathon.”
Another slow-walker, Martin Gamble, 24, said he’s usually playing with his phone while travelling from one place to another — even when he’s walking with friends — and that results in his infuriatingly slow amble. “I was texting my girlfriend walking down Smythe Street the other day, and this guy comes up behind me, yelling ‘Excuse me, can I get by?’ like he owned the whole damned sidewalk,” he fumed, still texting. “I let the guy aside, but man, where’s he going in such a hurry? And am I supposed to notice every single person trying to get by me when I’m just out for a walk?”
Saint John man Rick Freeman, 51, said he’d consider drafting some kind of petition against the inconsiderate slow people of New Brunswick, but he knows it wouldn’t go anywhere. “Those people just shuffle along day in and day out, in my way. Trying to get them to do anything would be like pulling teeth. I swear to god I’m just going to barrel through them next time I get trapped behind them. Steamroll ’em.”
Unfortunately for the province’s more productive, streamlined individuals, New Brunswick’s unhurried population plans to continue ignoring the pleas of anyone confined behind them, and keep trundling along at their annoyingly sluggish pace.
Jeffery Melanson of Florenceville-Bristol has his own idea of how to deal with the shambling walls of flesh. “If we all start carrying flashlights with us — and we should anyway for safety — then we can use those as indicators that we’re going to pass someone on the sidewalk. You make a little click noise with your tongue in your mouth, and it gives them an auditory warning. It’d really be very effective!” raved Melanson.
The Manatee‘s reporter attempted to file this story yesterday, but was caught behind a group of five slow-as-molasses high school students who were loudly laughing and talking, blocking the entire sidewalk.
I simply can t understand why we cannot simply adopt the european model of attaching a bicycle horn to your belt and upon approaching a saunterer honk once to pass on the right and twice to pass on the left, saunterers wearing earbuds receive a swift kick to the left buttocks to pass on the left, and so on.
I’m a fast walker, and I think slow walkers are self-entitled, inconsiderate people who think they own the whole sidewalk. The slow walker may have all afternoon to get to where he’s going. However, they should understand some of us have to get to appointments, work, or other places and wouldn’t like to spend twice as much time getting there because the slow walker doesn’t have anywhere to be today.
There should be a fine for slow walkers. You can be fined for driving too slow, as well as some demerit points taken off your license. The same should be said if you are walking too slow as well.