How to deal with unruly or oblivious users of public spaces

When someone's rudeness threatens to sully your day, brighten theirs instead

If I documented every example of inconsiderate behavior I see perpetrated by sentient adults while walking or running in Boulder, much of it at least as hazardous to the perps as it is to others, I'd have to start a separate category. It’s easier to describe these offenses at a group level, since the same categories of people tend to exhibit the same clusters of unruly, inconsiderate actions.

As one who prefers to kill people with kindness rather than berate them for slips—even when these "slips" represent other people's versions of proper manners—I've decided to conceal any aggravation I feel erupting inside me when I confront these scenarios, and instead fake a stoic, even Zen persona just to see what happens. Anyone can tee off on someone who's clearly been an ass, but there are other ways to at least try to plant the seed for useful change in others' minds. Besides, it does me no good to get pissed off when no actual harm has been done.

One type of offender is the oblivious multitasker who uses a cell phone while walking a dog or standing alongside a leashed dog on a public path. This person is usually female, usually over forty, and usually in dark tights or stretch pants revealing an enviable figure. Whatever else is evident about them, they are found with their heads angled downward about 45 degrees from the horizontal, their legs about two feet apart, and their mouths slightly agape in a half-smile, suggesting social-media scanning rather than urgent texting and thus making it easier for an approaching runner to despise them on sight.

About a week ago, I was running without Rosie on the Foothills Path yonder and turned a corner to see a woman fitting the above description standing in the middle of the path, a leashed boxer-like dog sitting next to her and a phone in one of her hands. The leash was stretched most of the way across the path. This was at about 3 p.m., I believe. 

"Goshdarned ding-a-ling," I growled, in too low a voice for the woman to hear from twenty meters away. "Every freaking day." But the boxer-like dog was already aware of me, looking half-asleep over its shoulder at me while its caretaker pushed buttons with her thumbs, her feet pointing inward as if to impart more oomph to whatever glib Instagram comment she was making to a post by a fellow soccer mom. (I don't so much judge people on sight as fill in obvious blanks in their histories.)

When the dog stood up and moved, the woman escaped her fugue and turned toward me. She had really nice cheekbones and one of those plain white winter hats that look good on anybody. Under different circumstances, I would have yodeled or woofed at her menacingly from a truck. And naturally, she managed to look shocked that someone else was occupying the same linear, concrete acreage she was and approaching fast.

"Sorry," the woman said as I passed the pair on the grass alongside the path.

This apology was—as it always is in these scenarios—pure, insincere reflex. But I was prepared for it, all smiles and bonhomie.

"Oh fuck that you are!" I blurted cheerfully. "You have a nice ass, so you think you can get away with anything! And you're almost right. Hey, what's his name?"

But I was moving too quickly to hear the response, and frankly, I didn't really care what the dog’s name was. The whole keeping-my-cool display was for my benefit, not hers. As difficult and probably pointless as it may be, I'm trying to cling to traditional communication styles and other social norms in a world gone seriously solipsistic.

Having passed that test, I carried a smidgen of spiritual momentum into my next encounter with flesh-based roving obstacles, which was about two days later. This near-collision was with a different common offender: The parent with a death-wish for his or her child or children. This one, as was the case in this instance, is usually a dad, usually under 40, and usually not the kind of athletic specimen too often found in this and adjacent ZIP codes. 

This time, I had Rosie with me. I was running on one side of a residential street while an apparent dad, a boy of about seven, and a Golden retriever were moving up the opposite sidewalk in the same direction. As Rosie and I pulled nearly alongside the back of this small parade, I noticed that the apparent dad was in the rear, looking down at a phone at the required 45-degree angle as he trudged along, while the boy was in front of him on an oversized skateboard and holding on to the leash of the Golden retriever, which was pulling the boy up the (badly dinged-up and lumpy) sidewalk.

"Flipping crap-for-brains," I hissed, again in a voice audible only to myself (and Rosie). "These sons of guns never learn." 

And then the predictable happened, though fortunately in its most benign manifestation: The Golden saw Rosie on the other side of the street and made a small lunge rightward, pulling the boy off the skateboard and the leash out of his hand. The boy kept his feet, barely, and the Golden, despite obviously being the usual affable goofball, kept to its side of the street. By the time the dad looked up, the train in front of him had broken apart and he looked confused as to why this event might have transpired.

"Howdy, motherfuckers!" I called out, grinning like I'd just smoked a blunt (it had been at least 30 minutes) and trying to sound like a randomly selected Jim Carrey character. Then I pointed at the skateboard, still rolling slowly up the road by itself. "That bullshit looks cute and all, but it’s risky enough in a back yard, let alone here!"

The dog wagged its tail, the boy looked at me like I'd just sprouted a third head, and the dad never even looked up. But he also never broke stride, so there's that. I jogged on, giving a thumbs-up over my shoulder and energized by the experience. The kid and one or both dogs present could have been seriously hurt, which would have meant fisticuffs and perhaps a full-blown donnybrook erupting in East Boulder. Again. And the skateboard was made for someone twice the boy’s size, but it might be splitting hairs to go there.

I maintain that these things happen with far greater frequency here than they do elsewhere. That’s the whole reason I go on road trips and travel to other places—not to escape utter mayhem (it’s not that bad) but to reassure myself that Boulder people are indeed unusually dickish, so I can continue to revel mistake-free in my own unjust graciousness toward these people.

About the only way I can stay sane—or at least avoid a permanent defensive stance—is to avoid feeding into the negativity of a given “offensive” event, and hope that my forced gaiety and joviality can impart to the inconsiderate what rowdiness and threats never will, as fleetingly satisfying as it can often be to be, like, a major jerkwad.

(Note: The two above episodes in fact took place, but without the verbal reactions described.)