Since becoming a mother, I've become a bit of a zealot about crossing the road only when the 'green walker', as my even more politically correct friend calls it, is flashing. I often feel embarassed loitering several seconds longer at the edge of the road while other grown-ups rush across. However I also feel cross when I see people who are walking with children failing to use road crossings properly. I'm not sure how they expect their kids to learn to stay safe when they have a quick look up and down the road ten yards away from a zebra crossing with a lollipop person and then drag their child across in front of a bus and three cars.
Nowadays I try to make that extra little effort to cross the road safely in order to set an example to children. I sometimes even tell off other parents I see taking a risk (only ones I know are really nice and will not be mean back to me!). I pause by the side of crossings, looking at the sky or people around me instead of rushing across in a frenzy of adrenaline, risking my life to get two people ahead in the queue for the bus. I view this as one of the exercises I can practise until I reach that perfect Zen-like state in which I can 'be' the traffic and weave effortlessly in among the white vans and taxi drivers, absorbing their hurled abuse as part of the music of the universe. It's nice to take a whole twenty seconds out in the day and contemplate the world. If there is a zebra crossing a few yards up the road I can walk to, I embrace the opportunity to burn off those few extra calories. It all mounts up in the joyous journey to the shop of the cream slice. I may not be in a perfect state of oneness with the traffic and universe but I can at least feel smug about having more chance of enjoying a cup of tea and cake rather than sitting in an ambulance explaining why I dragged the Piglet in front of a speeding car.
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