Every morning, I have a routine. It's pretty much set in stone, I suppose because I am old and set in my ways. Each night, I set my alarm for 6:30. Once it goes off, I hit snooze approximately 9 times. I realize that is ridiculous, but it helps me in my gradual waking up process. If you know me at all, you know that I am NOT a morning person and waking me up without a warning can cause calamity and disaster. Certain friends of mine ARE morning people (Mando), and they have gotten their heads bitten off on more than one occasion when they were acting too perky for my liking.
Anyway. So I snooze... get up.. shower.. inevitably take too long, and end up racing the clock to get on the red line by 8. Once I make it to my stop, I shove everyone out of my way and fly out of the doors like a bat out of hell. I go right off the train, scurry up the escalator, veer left up the staircase, and I'm free to shove my way down Jackson and into my building.
This morning, as I was going through this very routine, I got stuck behind a person on the escalator who refused to walk up it- he just stood there in the middle of the escalator, not leaving any space for me to squeeze by him on his left. I was pretty annoyed, especially because a line of escalator walkers started to form behind me and I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that I was stuck- it wasn't MY fault we were at a standstill. I started looking around, with pure aggrevation and hatred written all over my face, loudly sighing and generally acting like a snobby bitch so that everyone behind me could see that I was NOT the lazy one who refused to budge. To make matters worse, I looked to my left at the staircase that's next to the escalator and saw people passing me as they lept up the stairs, two at a time, without the aid of an already moving staircase.
I was cursing people in my head left and right- damn this lazy idiot holding me up on the escalator. Damn that energetic idiot racing up the stairs as if his life depended on it. Damn me for being caught somewhere between lazy and energetic, because I wanted to race up the escalator as opposed to just taking the stairs. Suddenly, a realization hit me like a ton of bricks- this was all my fault. Why do people walk up the escalator instead of walking up the stairs? Laziness. Was I being ridiculous for expecting someone to try to cheat the system by walking up a staircase that moves for you? Isn't the whole point of an escalator so that you DON'T have to use your legs? The escalator ride was excruciatingly slow, so I had a lot of time to ponder these things, and I realized: I need to reevaluate my life.
This got me thinking about other aspects of day-to-day life that I get annoyed about, that are probably also my own fault. After some serious reflection, it turns out I don't like to take responsibility for much of anything and I generally throw out blame and judgement left and right. And who is to blame for this bad attitude (badditude)? I think the answer is crystal clear- Patrick. He is the supreme king of looking down on everyone from his golden cloud of judgement, and I guess it's contagious. So my New Year's Resolution (one of the 10 I made so that the odds of not breaking at least one is pretty decent) is this: Be less like Patrick in 2011.
