sidewalk mayhem

I almost feel bad about giving my mom a hard time about it. Almost. But it was something to laugh about, so it’s not all that bad- right? of course right. It turns out all the North Americans are ill at ease about the seeming inability of the Glaswegians, and general Scottish public, to pick a side of the side walk to walk down. I think I have a harder time than most because in the two months I spent in Uganda I could never quite get a hang of walking down the left- no right!- shoot! It was the left- side of the sidewalk. In the end I spent a great deal of time running into people, or having head shaken at me condescendingly, or doing that thing where you both stand and move to either side at the same time and it’s super awkward and usually men think you are flirting with them when it happens and then it takes you minutes of explanation that you REALLY didn’t know which side of the sidewalk to be on and, no, you don’t want to give them your number because, no, you weren’t flirting with them and no, you are not interested in dating/marriage/just coffee thank you very much I’m already a bit late to whatever meeting I just made up in my head.

But all of us (us being the North Americans- myself, the Canadians, the other US citizens- though not the one whose father was English, even though I did not notice this problem in England, and believe me- I would have noticed) hate the ridiculousness of the refusal to choose sides. This is Scotland, for heaven’s sake, not Switzerland, just pick one and walk on it. And all of us notice it. Maybe this is because in the back of our minds we hear our grade school teachers’ voices
“All right class, now let’s walk quietly down the hall. Stay on the right side. Oh and Billy, honey, please keep your finger out of your nose. Thank you dear. Hands to yourself. Everybody knows which is the right side, don’t they? Good. Let’s sing the happy working song as we go…”
And it always seemed clear that walking down a hall was like driving. So, since the Brits drive down the left, shouldn’t they walk down the left as well? And yet as I walk down the left side of the sidewalk or hallway, there I am, face to face with someone approaching me on the same side. At first I brushed it off as an international not as clever as I to have figured out that WE (“we” of course, refers to the Scottish and the enlightened foreigners- the elite, if you will, clever enough to integrate themselves almost instantly upon arrival) walk on the left side. Until I realized. It. Was. The. Scottish. Too. I asked a few Scotts about this phenomenon over beers.

The answer?

Every time, it was a shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t suppose it matters really, just dodge whoever comes your way.”
“But if it were standardized nobody would hit each other and you could walk in straight lines (increasing efficiency)”
“Yes, I suppose it would be shorter not to weave back and forth so much dodging people. Honestly I’ve never thought about it before… I probably won’t ever think about it again either.”

Two Canadians (at the table with me) and one American (um… that would be me) sit dumbstruck. This is crap. I want answers! I want to know which side! And for heaven’s sake I want it taught in schools, I want a public awareness campaign, bake sales, Mothers Against Crooked Walking meetings- so that the Scots can finally understand why it is important that I know which side of the sidewalk I’m supposed to walk on. I have to write a paper about which Human Right is most important to me; I am seriously considering the right to walk in a straight line instead of having to dodge people too noncommittal to choose.

“Actually, though, we walk on the right side of the corridor,” he clarified a bit later. Corridor=hallway, in case you were wondering. Oh goodness, this does complicate matters. They drive on the left (which it turns out was so that you could dismount your horse without being in the middle of traffic, so that makes sense historically), but then they walk on the right side of the hallway? Oh sweet mercy. What can expect of a society, of a people, of a culture and an education system that refuses to form a uniform way of walking down the sidewalk? They are, all of them, live wires. Loose cannons. If they are willing to weave back and forth haphazardly on their way going down the street, how will they vote? What will they eat? What will they drink? What will they wear? How will they act? How will they love? How will they fight? How do you know what to expect from a people that are fundamentally unpredictable?

The next day I am still wondering about these crazy Scots. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a habit oriented person. I don’t sleep on the same side of the bed every night. I get antsy if I stay do the same thing every day in a row. I don’t really care if itineraries are followed or not. I would consider myself a “go with the flow person.” But that phrase- “just go with the flow” is one I have heard more odd times than I would have expected. While having my carpet redone, a few days after moving in, I was sitting on the couch of the room while the carpet was being put down IN THAT ROOM.
“Where do you want me to go?” I asked
“Well, just now you’re fine right there. Just go with the flow.”
And later, during orientation, I asked another student what there was to do. Of course the response was the same- a few suggestions of bars and clubs and things, then “just go with the flow.” The really amazing thing about that response being that he wasn’t blowing me off at all, he really wasn’t.
I’ve heard it at least twice more and I’ve only been here a week and a half.

The other strange thing about this crazy culture where people genuinely never consider why you might want to all walk on one side of the sidewalk instead of bumping into each other and where it’s not really necessary to move off the couch in the room that’s being recarpetted “just yet” because they aren’t going to be to that particular section for another 5 minutes or so- is that they run surprisingly on schedule.
It’s not like Africa time- a very, very lax way of dealing with time tables and schedules- where a bus leaving “at 2” might leave at 2 or 3 or the next day and will invariably contain live chickens that are sitting on your feet and squawk when you go over bumps. But every tour I have been on, every bus I have gone on (so far), every train and class and lecture has run within one minute of its scheduled time. That’s better than many European countries I went to. So I wonder how it is that they decide what is and is not important. Apparently swerving like a madman all over the sidewalk to avoid traffic isn’t given a thought, but clearly there is time subconsciously added to account for this inefficiency when determining how long it will take to get somewhere.


update:
tl;dr version: People walk on both sides of the sidewalk, causing them to swerve. I like these swervy people.