It was a lovely early autumn afternoon when an auburn-haired woman in a blue minivan made a very small miscalculation. It was to provoke a prolonged and bizarre series of silent interactions. She had arrived at an intersection in Friendship Heights, and had signaled her intention to turn right. It so happened that the front of her vehicle covered roughly half of the crosswalk. Perhaps she had thought she could catch the last of the yellow light, and hadn’t made it; in any case, she was now stuck in a position that partially obscured the zebra markings showing where pedestrians are supposed to cross.
Traffic was surging along Wisconsin Avenue in front of her, so she couldn’t go forward. Cars had quickly filled in behind her, so she couldn’t reverse. The woman looked out at the waiting pedestrians (I was among them) and, smiling, made a helpless I’m-sorry face.
A moment later, the crosswalk light turned white and we started making our way across from either side.
That’s when things got weird. Several men and women coming from the far side began clucking noisily about the woman’s discourtesy in blocking their way. As the first of the group passed the van, one of its members raised a forefinger and silently, sarcastically, scolded the driver.
The woman inside the car looked embarrassed, but also a little annoyed. She had made a mistake; she’d signaled an apology. What was the big deal?
Then another member of the group — they were all adults, possibly from the same family — did the same thing. Walking slowly past the front of the minivan, he squinted at the now visibly discomfited woman, wagged his finger, and mouthed some sort of admonishment.
Then the party passed on, still ostentatiously shaking their heads at the amazing rudeness of the inconsiderate jerk who had caused them to step perhaps two feet out of their way.
It was a remarkable display. Watching it, I couldn’t help but wonder at the strange unforgiveness of the pedestrians. Had they themselves never made a silly blunder? Did someone else’s minor infraction entitle them to mock and lecture?
Apparently so. Under what’s called the “disinhibition effect,” many of us feel free to deride and scorn others for mild transgressions if we don’t know them personally. It’s what explains the stunning malevolence of so much online commentary: Otherwise civil persons feel unconstrained about abusing strangers via computer. It also explains the mutual antagonism of bicyclists and car drivers, an enmity that instantly switches the other way when the cyclist gets back in his Jeep or the driver on to his Cannondale.
Silently wagging one’s finger at a person who has made an innocent error is a mild version of the phenomenon, but mortifying for the recipient. Presumably that’s why the traffic authorities in Caracas, Venezuela, recently sent a squadron of mimes out to reprove the city’s famously reckless drivers. How humiliating, to be told off in gestures, in front of everybody, by a performer in white clown makeup!
Maybe those finger-wagging pedestrians in Friendship Heights were Venezuelan. Maybe they belonged to a traveling troupe of mimes. Whoever they were, they certainly taught that poor minivan driver a lesson. I don’t suppose she’ll be braking near the crosswalk lines again any time soon.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
