After the pull-up bar incident, I am a less aggressive buyer

There's a reason why a Google search for the phrase “I want to punch slow walkers in the back of the head” returns more than 19 million results. It's annoying when healthy people wander aimlessly and with an air of nonchalance in the supermarket, stopping in the most inconvenient places – like the middle of an aisle – to ponder the universe.

I may not want to hit these people on the back of the head (too brutal), but since my life is extremely important, I want to push them. I act like an impatient driver in a souped-up V8. I rev the engine and get too close to them, forcing them to accelerate. When I spot the smallest space to their right, ZOOM – I overtake.

Embarrassingly, I didn't realise that my behaviour was troubling to the average slow walker until I was one myself. On a perfectly ordinary Sunday, I took a running leap onto the pull-up bar that (I thought) sat safely in the doorway of my bedroom and landed pale and sweaty on the bedroom floor, with a broken thumb and a lower back that refused to move.

For weeks after Thumbgate/Bumgate, my life continued at a snail's pace. When the cashier at the McDonald's drive-thru gestured for me to hold my card to the wall-mounted scanner, I suppressed a groan and leaned toward the scanner. As I walked and people in cars kindly stopped to let me cross a busy road, I was afraid of appearing ungrateful. Instead of my exaggerated “jogging walk of gratitude,” I strolled slowly at the presumptuous pace my tailbone would allow.

The most memorable were my experiences at the supermarket. I felt the pressure to follow the nonverbal cues of shoppers who, like me, were in driver mode. They walked fast and purposefully as they closed the distance between us, their breath in the back of my head as they tried to push me forward. And then—ZOOM—they overtook me, brushing past me while my body tensed, expecting to be knocked over.

Load

Yes, I believe in karma. And yes, I learned a valuable lesson and am now more mindful of how my actions, even if they seem harmless, can make others feel.

Of course, I reserve the right to be (inside) angry at people who stop in the middle of the aisle to chat with their friends. Sliding a little to the left would be nice. Or at the people who, while waiting in line at the checkout, think that the line will move faster if we get so close that we almost spoon.

When I do the latter, I want to appear a little unpredictable—like a driver texting. I step back a little, rest my free hand on my hip, and sway my hips, the human equivalent of drifting onto the wrong side of the road. Sometimes I gently swing my shopping basket back and forth, pretending I have no idea that it could easily brush the leg of the person behind me. Wouldn't that be a shame?