Another observation I have made in New York was that people do not obey the stay-to-the-right rule. At first I figured that this was a problem with an ethnically diverse culture where some people are used to being on the left side while walking. Later I discovered that it was not due to background but because people were in a rush. If the train they wanted to get to was on the left, they would run down the left side of the stairway.

These are my enemies. They are people who make me shake my head and say how silly people can be. Well, today I was silly. But I did it at the wrong time. I noticed that hundreds of people were funneling down one side of the stairway and hundreds of other people were funneling up the other side. Since I was downstairs, it would have been my duty to go up the side that was going up as well. The only problem was that the people coming down were completely blocking my ability to walk over to the up side!

Since the up side was so backed up, and the down side had thinned out, I had made the decision to go up the down side. I went on the left stairwell. It was fine for the first half of the climb and I was passing dozens of people going up the right side. I had almost triumphed. But then, a massive crowd of people began running down the stairs to reach the train I had just gotten off of. I was nearly knocked down by one person who was in a rush to get to the train and the second half of the walk up the stairs was a disaster. I think I may have been inapropriately touched a couple of times on my way up. And now I looked like a complete idiot.

I was seriously fighting against people who were going the right of way. I should have just walked down with them instead of continuing up, but I couldn’t. I felt justified by the hundreds of people I had already seen going up the wrong stairway in my months in New York. So, I have learned my lesson: I cannot go against traffic. It just isn’t something I have the ability to do. I must go on the right side, and I must criticize the people who go on the left side. This is because I know from personal experience how horrible it can be. And if I can’t do it, they can’t do it.