slow down, st louis

(note: I started this blog a month ago.  I just got around to finishing and posting it, but the sentiment is still alive.)

I can't fool myself all of the time.  I can't make myself believe, no matter how optimistic, that I am as good of a person as I would want myself to be.

I forget to say 'please' and 'thank you'.

I am so on-time that I'm late.

I drive like an idiot, usually because of the aforementioned lateness.

I swear more than a person with my vocabulary should.

I degree-drop (think name-drop, but regarding my education instead of people) at every chance.

I wear flip-flops constantly.

okay, so the last one's just a personal choice.  but I have come so close to frostbite (among other debilitating toe injuries circa 2002) so many times that I should really think about putting on a pair of real shoes more often.  and while I'm sure others out there would be mildly offended by my lack of pedicure, that's not up for discussion at the moment.

no, tonight's blog is about a cold sunday night in october.  a night when I was lazily meandering home in my monster truck, took a route I haven't taken in a while, and ended up forgetting to be the inconsiderate me of normal circumstance. instead, I was only standing out in south city with cold toes.

walking bubba through my old neighborhood was one of my favorite things to do when I first moved here.  he had a ton of energy, I needed to be out of the house.  the neighborhood was quiet, residential, and interesting.  I had three or so regular routes that could take as long as two hours, if we so chose.  the only time I felt even a bit unsafe was in my necessary crossing of jamieson avenue at lindenwood park.

jamieson is a wide, four-lane stretch that goes from being functional and busy (it helps people exit and enter a major interstate at its beginning) to immediately residential (which is where it runs along the west side of the small neighborhood park).  there are stoplights at random intervals, but along the park there are only stop signs; the stop signs are treated as yields when traffic is light, the street itself is treated as an off-shoot of the interstate.

my lazy drive through this part of town was partially out of nostalgia for my old neighborhood and partially out of a need to go to the nearest branch of my bank.  while on this part of jamieson, I was at the front of a pack of oddly heavy traffic for 930p on a sunday, when I noticed a dog walking in the middle of the road.

the picture in my mind is still and clear: the dog didn't dart.  it  just shuffled across the street, staring at the road but not avoiding the headlights or sounds of cars.  it was visibly old, per the matted fur and wobbly gait, but it was also visibly dazed.  afterall, bubba and any other life-loving canine would have looked up and probably sprinted away terrified.  I registered all of this in an instant; I also registered that the people alongside and behind me didn't seem to care.  they needed to be somewhere.  they swerved, they honked, they sped up as they passed.

the rest of the story is sort of classic do-gooder: I pulled over.  so did a few others.  the dog wouldn't let us near it, but it would shelter itself under my car until the police and the humane society arrived.  it didn't have a collar on, it probably had a broken hip.  I signed it over to the humane society, and prayed a humanist prayer that someone would miss it, someone would go looking for it, someone would pick it up...

standing there for about 45 minutes, in 40-degree weather, in a thin sweater and flip-flops, I remember one thing vividly: oncoming headlights... the anger expressed by my fellow do-gooders as those headlights whipped past.

here we were - trying to protect an animal that couldn't survive on its own, and here was the rest of the driving population of the metro area - trying to get wherever they were going as quickly as possible.  an obviously ironic situation, considering that an all-too-quick and careless driver is probably how this poor dog was injured in the first place.  aside from that, it was disheartening, if not mildly alarming, to know that drivers on jamieson had so little regard for life happening outside of their little plastic-and-metal bubble that some didn't even see our little troupe gathered on the road, and that those who did treated momentarily curving into the next lane like a large (honk and yell worthy) inconvenience. 

I find that my inconsiderate behaviors around being late and driving like an idiot have increased in my two years in st louis.  I can blame "fast-paced city-living" and "bad st louis drivers" for it, or I can own up to the fact that I let it happen.  that I have again become a chronically late person, with an ill-temper around driving and sour outlook on my fellow travelers.

I am proud of myself for stopping to help that dog (no matter what became of it, though that hope for a good outcome is blindingly alive in me).  I am not proud of myself for usually being in such a hurry that my behavior on any given trip through the city is more likely to resemble that of those behind the fast-approaching headlights.  

the resolution coming out of this must be to slow myself down, and hope that I take small pieces of st louis with me.