Make Way for Schmucklings

It is only August, but already autumn is in the air. For the past couple of days the temperature has only gone into the 60’s, and it is becoming more and more evident that the days are getting shorter. However an even more concrete sign of immanent change has appeared here on the streets of dear old Boston.

I was going about my lawful occasions yesterday when I had my first sighting. Near the corner of Mass. Ave. and Boylston, the home of Berklee College of Music, there they were, a flock of college freshman being sheparded along under the fretful wings of there cruiseware clad parental units, lumbering down the streets banging into innocent passersby with their instrument cases. This is only the tip of the iceberg, but a sobering reminder of the season that people who actually live here dread. Fall semester.

Soon the streets will be teaming with herds of freshmen, traveling in packs, clustering together like some 10 headed, 20 legged beast that upon being returned to the wild is both excited and frightened. A bad combination! Gibbering and squealing they will block sidewalks in their progress, rubber-necking, commenting, gawking and in general making a nuisance of themselves and creating a hazard for anyone who is trying to make any progress down the street. They will shuffle along in a maddening Brownian motion, directionless, yet determined, to explore their new environment.

What is even more amazing and infuriating though is when 2 co-ed’s decide to venture out on their own. I’ve never really run across this problem with guys, but for some reason when two 18 year old girls hit the street, they can manage to take up the entire sidewalk regardless of how wide the thoroughfare and how small the girls in question. It is this sort of vague, directed, directionlessness that is like a homing signal. No matter the position of the co-ed in question and the oncoming traffic they manage to wander straight in front of all oncoming traffic. If you give any indication that you expect them to move out of the way, it is greeted with a combination of exasperated sigh, shrug and eye roll that indicates how hopelessly clueless you are not to realize that they in fact do own the sidewalk and can produce the necessary paperwork to prove it. This technique is lost on me. I survived a teenage daughter, and having been unwilling to put up with that crap from her, I am certainly not going to tolerate it from some complete stranger. I just keep moving and the little dears will just have to move over to their side of the sidewalk. I am experimenting with a technique that my pal Eddy uses. He simply comes to a dead halt, crosses his arms and meets the offender in question with an answering glare. He’s bigger than I am but, though pint sized, I think I might be scarier looking. Occasionally there is something to be said for having a face like a can of worms.

Young males are just as bad in their own gormless way. If they are not being out and out offensive by commenting loudly about fags, old people, or anything else that pops into their otherwise empty heads, then they are blindly lumbering into people like some drugged mastodon. I’m not certain that the Eddy technique is the answer for me in this case, though I may be selling myself short. I managed to scare the shit out of a couple of my daughter’s rather large boyfriends.

It all seems very irritating while it’s going on, but within a couple of months the mobs will thin out as the semester gets underway and the students realize that they are in fact expected to get some work done and this isn’t some extended shopping holiday. The cold days of the New England winter will also drive everyone, myself included, indoors and hibernation mode will take over. Then, finally, the days will once again lengthen, the sun will start doing a decent days work, warming the air and it will drive these migratory visitors back to the mid-west or wherever it is they come from and return the city to it’s resident population, allowing us to enjoy another peaceful summer in the city.