Rick’s Rants and Raves

Today at the India Festival, I saw two perfect examples of one of my pet peeves: people who are oblivious to the impact they have on the folks around them.

We were in the Veterans Memorial auditorium watching some performances. I’m not sure who was there first, but two people unwittingly conspired to significantly interrupt traffic in one of the aisles of the auditorium. One was a self-important dork with his video camera on a tripod. His tripod was half in the aisle, half in front of a seat, and he had his butt sticking into the aisle as he tried to determine if he could get some video of the ladies dancing on the stage in traditional Indian dress. His butt alone took up about 1/3 of the aisle as he messed with his video camera.

The second person was a mother who’d brought her kid into the auditorium in a stroller. That was bad sign number one. She evidently had missed the areas outside of the doors where EVERYONE ELSE was parking their kid carriers, and decided that her wittle bumpykins would be better served by sitting in a stroller than in a seat like the other kids (he was probably about 4). So where is this stroller parked? Right next to Mr-Tripod-In-The-Aisle. HULLOOO? I watched as a dozen or so folks turned sideways and stepped gingerly so as to pass between these two. The mother was just sitting there as they went by, not thinking that perhaps her stroller was causing an obstruction. His butt, of course, didn’t notice a thing except the video camera.

I secretly hoped for a minor oopsie when he left the video camera (still atop the tripod-in-the-aisle) to take his dSLR down closer to the stage. Some kids nearly tripped over one of the tripod legs as they went scampering up the aisle. Alas, he returned to find his video camera still intact, and his tripod legs unbent.