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 ETIQUETTE ON THE SIDEWALK 
 by Barbara J. Olexer Mallory Hix stood at the intersection of Connecticut and RhodeIsland Avenues and M Street and glared after the bike messenger withhate. She was surprised at how much she hated bike messengers. Whenshe'd first moved to Washington, D.C., or "the District," as thecognoscenti call it, she had been an easy-going middle-aged lady. Shehad smilingly made way for elderly people on the street and cheerfullygiven her seat on buses to young women carrying infants. But ten yearsof the incredible rudeness of the District had soured her as a pedestrianand user of public transportation.When she came down the escalator into the metro station in themorning on her way to work, she felt a profound disdain for her fellows.They scurried like vermin. They made her think of that Disney film of lemmings rushing to the brink of the cliff to hurl themselves over andswim out to sea until they were exhausted and drowned. She thought thatthe people in the metro stations not only acted like lemmings, they
 
 
2appeared to have about the same intelligence and understanding.Swarming, jostling, pushing and shoving to get to their destinations tenminutes earlier than if they took their turns like civilized people and behaved like sentient beings instead of rodents driven by an instinct for destruction.Mallory stood on the sidewalk, her new mint green suit plasteredwith birthday cake and the cake itself a broken ruin at her feet. She hatedthe bike messenger with the accumulated hatred of ten years of victimization. Bike messengers were the most selfish, arrogant, rude, anddespicable of all the District denizens. Tourists were a nuisance. Shedisliked them on principle, especially those who had no better sense thanto ride the metro during rush hour. Little knots of secretaries wereannoying -- they walked three or four abreast on the sidewalk, shriekingwith laughter or shrilling with indignation, and giving not the smallestdamn how they assaulted your eardrums. Drivers of cars, taxis, and buses were an abomination. They all drove as if pedestrians either didn'thave corporeal bodies or as if pedestrians were amusing targets, onwhom to count coup, especially by splashing in wet weather.Yes, she had grown to detest most of her fellow humans in theDistrict. But the only ones she truly hated were bike messengers. Nearlyevery day she suffered some rudeness from bike messengers and oftenshe was threatened with bodily harm. A friend of hers had once beenknocked down by bike messenger and had her arm broken. Bikemessengers pedaled furiously up and down the sidewalks, swoopingamong the pedestrians, yelling obscenities at people who didn't get outof their way quickly enough.Mallory stood in the middle of the sidewalk, these thoughts flashingthrough her mind. She glanced down at the birthday cake. She'd baked itherself, decorated it with pink icing and colored sugar crystals. She'dcarefully covered it with plastic film and carried it tenderly from her apartment down the escalator to the metro and up the escalator toConnecticut Avenue. Within two blocks of her office building the bike
 
 
3messenger had ruined everything. And, to add insult to injury, he'dyelled at her."Get your fat ass out of the way, granny!" he'd hollered as he flew past. He hadn't run into her. Thinking it over, Mallory came to believe hehad deliberately reached out and knocked the cake from her hands. Awave of fierce anger shook her. She turned and went back to theFarragut North Metro Station. Down the escalator, into the train, back home again.Mallory called in sick to work. She explained to Virginia Stephens,the office manager, that she'd been victimized by a bike messenger andwas really too shaken to come to work. Virginia expressed concern andsaid they'd miss her at Becky's birthday party. Mallory asked her to tellthe others what had happened and that she was sorry she couldn't deliver the cake she'd promised. That taken care of, she took off the suit anddrew a hot bath.It was while she was soaking in the tub, trying to forget how muchshe hated bike messengers, that the idea came to her. At first she tried to put it out of her mind. Impishly, it refused to leave. The more shethought about it, the more it seemed feasible. Not only feasible, sensibleand right. She would like to kill the bike messenger. It would serve himright. How dare he run people down and yell at them! Strewing ruin andmayhem behind him wherever he went. Damn him to hell!The bath hadn't relaxed her. She was still so angry that waves of hatred actually shook her as she dressed. She sat in her recliner but shedidn't turn the TV on. Neither did she pick up her crossword book nor the vegetarian magazine that had come in the mail the day before. Shesat there and deliberately planned to murder the bike messenger.The biggest obstacle, and one that seemed at first to stymie the wholeidea, was that she wasn't sure she could recognize that bike messenger again. Gradually, as she brooded, she realized that it didn't matter. All bike messengers were tarred with the same brush -- it didn't matter 
which
  bike messenger she killed. All of them were rude and dangerous; any of 
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