I Am The Worst Jaywalker On The Planet

I am absolutely terrible at jaywalking. It falls under the category of one of the many "practical" skills that I never properly learned (there should have been a class offered in high school called "Life Skills For Morons", where I could have learned things that most people instinctively know, like how not to get hit by cars when crossing the street or how to pee in a urinal without getting your pants wet).

When crossing a street, I regularly have very close-calls with automobiles. Drivers are constantly pounding morse-code into their car horns telling me that I'm an idiot and/or that I am seconds away from getting a bumper to the spleen. Making matters worse is the fact that cars seem to be attracted to me like moths to a flame, and that the natural reaction most drivers have when seeing my sorry nerdy ass is to hit the gas. Typically when trying to jaywalk, I'll make it about a third of the way across the street before cars start veering towards me from all directions and my survival instincts kick in, resulting in a screaming mad dash back to the safety of the sidewalk (followed shortly by a slow defeated march to the nearest crosswalk).

Part of the problem is that I was hit by a car while walking home from school in the second grade, breaking my arm for the first time in what has been (if I do say so myself) a spectacular legacy of my limbs being broken. I haven't quite looked at oncoming traffic the same since, and hence my "survival of the fittest" approach to being a pedestrian.

But what can I say? I live dangerously.