Sometimes the Seattle Polite attitude (mentioned at the beginning of this article about its flipside, the Seattle Freeze) really amuses me.
On my way home for lunch, I was just standing at the corner of Pike and 8th by the Convention Center waiting for the light to change. As I stood there, the car coming down the hill slowed, stopped, and the driver nodded for me to cross. I pointed at the light — “You’ve got the green, buddy…” — and he just waved me across.
Well, whatever. I crossed, and he went on his way. His good deed for the day, maybe?
“Tomorrow Wendy (Green Eggs and Hammond)” by System Syn (2002, 5:12).
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That (we have the same thing in most of Oregon, at least the rural parts) drives me absolutely screaming and gesturing insane. “Oh, how nice. You stopped when you have the right-of-way. Now I can walk out in front of you, against the light, and hope that nobody comes flying through the other way, with the green, and runs over me, since I’ll be at fault for denting their hood with my melon, since I’m now crossing against the light. Sure hope that while I’m in front of you, looking the other way, nobody rear-ends you and smashes you forward into me.”
A few months ago, when someone was doing a particularly stupid version of that to me while he was turning left off a four-lane highway with no turn lane at the top of a fairly blind hill, and I was waiting at the stop sign on a side street, I finally had to shut off my car, get out, walk over to the curb and stand with my arms folded, before he grasped that he should just get the hell out of the passing lane where he had been sitting for a couple of minutes while I waved and pointed at his stupidity.
Being completely Seattle myself, cars and myself get in fights over who should be going right then.
I bet you anything he’d probably just almost killed someone a few blocks back.