Two things provoked me to consult my critical third eye this morning. Translation: two things pissed me off to an extent that I felt it meaningful to respond to them.

One occurred when I was driving to the cafe by my house.

I was stopped at a crosswalk and a man had begun to walk, seemingly oblivious to my car, to the other side of the road. As soon as he saw me, he waved an apology, smiled and accelerated into a jog.

My first thought driving away was, “How ridiculous. This dude thinks he’s burdening me by walking across the road, as if I didn’t have five additional seconds to spare.”

Then my Anglican roots kicked in. “He’s only being polite, courteous,” I thought.

But my third eye wouldn’t have it. “Canadians, psht, they’re so goddamned polite. They don’t stop to think their unconditional manners might be encouraging a completely fucked way of life.”

I left it at that and accelerated through the intersection.

At that point I still hadn’t reached a level of annoyance to bother jotting anything down; it takes a lot these days to make me think there’s a point in writing something down.

(Un)fortunately for you, I crossed that threshold precisely two left turns later.

I had just hung a left at the old church along Lakeshore, purposely passing the Starbucks so I could hang back and listen to thirty more seconds of Best Coast’s “No One Like You,” when I pulled up to another crosswalk.

Through the windshield I spotted a woman bundled in winter gear a quarter of the way across the intersection.

Because I failed to use my blinker, signaling my impending left turn, this woman apparently assumed I was headed straight. So what did she do but break into a jog, desperately fleeing the road so as not to interrupt my travels.

That did it.

I turned left, cursed violently to myself and sped to Starbucks to jot this down.