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April 05, 2005

On walking faster

We think the Sydney Morning Herald might do a better job of screening contributions to its Heckler section, in which members of the public write about various issues. For one thing, they might check whether or not their contributors are, well, a little slow.

What other explanation could there be for the fact that Stuart Robinson's wife moves a lot faster without him, than with him.

According to Stuart:

A self-confident lady can move through a crowd faster, and with much greater ease, than a man. She naturally expects to be deferred to, given space and, without thinking, she expects people to get out of her way.

On the other hand, her male counterpart has been trained to be on the lookout to give way to almost everyone and everything. Critical areas include the Easter Show, railway stations, city streets during business hours, and the entrances and exits of almost any place of entertainment.

Perhaps things are different in Melbourne, but Bleeding Edge is constantly having to check himself whenever he's walking with the Bleeding Edge spouse, not because of other people, but because the Better Half constantly wants to [grits teeth] look at things.

Even younger women are apparently gripped by the same compulsion. On Sunday, at South Melbourne market, for instance, the spouse and the Bleeding Edge daughter allowed one to walk ahead, due to the fact that one was laden with the shopping. They still ended up 25 metres behind, due to their desire to survey various offerings, rather than to, well, walk to the car!

In fact we're probably slow in comparison to other males. The previous week, in the same place, we were almost flattened by a young man who cannoned off our shoulder while overtaking us, without a word of apology.

Our theory is that in Melbourne, the males walk faster. If they don't they'll end up in hospital

Posted by cw at April 5, 2005 06:41 PM