Much of what ordinary people do irritates me. Blogging is my therapy… or is it? Maybe it is really unhealthy self-indulgence; feeding the disdain I have for people who blithely eschew common sense. It’s not just big issues, like why the country has 45 million people without health care – it’s also the “little” things.

Like why do people in my neighborhood walk in the street? I live in a residential neighborhood in the suburbs -- Rows of houses fronting a nicely paved street with concrete sidewalks on both sides. Yet invariably, when people walk by, they are walking in the street, not on the sidewalk!! Whattasamatta... are the batteries low? “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back”?

My friend William has a tree growing in a strip of soil between the street and the sidewalk in front of his house. Over the years, the tree root has pushed up a square of the sidewalk. The City notified him he would have to grind it down or tear it out and pour new concrete. – So people won’t trip on it. What people? Nobody walks on the sidewalk, they’re all walking in the street. Why should he bother?

The next time I am out mowing my lawn and someone walks by in the street I am going to ask them why they don’t walk on the sidewalk? Maybe I should tear up the sidewalk in front of my house and plant roses. I am sure the people walking by in the street would love to stop and smell them.