Get Up, Stand Up, Stand Up For Your Rights

I belong to an opressed class. We are looked down upon, harassed, and denied the rights and privileges of the dominant class. But no more, I say. It's time to protest. It's time to start a movement. And so I ask you to join with me, my brothers and sisters, in the revolution. What revolution, you ask? What movement? The Walkers' Rights Movement!

You see, I am a walker. You may not know this about me because I'm a bit of a closet walker. I do have a car and I do use it, but that's just to avoid the looks of scorn I get when I show my true self to the world. But when no one's looking, late Friday mornings when everyone's at work, I come out. And, man, it feels good. I am a walker. I get tingles just typing that out loud. The italics produce even more tingles.

"But, Fobby," you may say, "how can you claim to represent an opressed class? Surely you chose to be a walker. I mean, you weren't born that way." And if you said that you might be right, by which I mean you'd be dead wrong but I want you to feel validated in expressing your (incorrect) opinion. Yes, it's true that I own a car, as I've already admitted, and it's also true that I use it, as I've also admitted. But look at what I have going against me:

• I have a two-and-a-half-year-old who doesn't like to sit around the apartment all day.
  
• Going for walks makes the screaming and whining stop.
• I have a flabby tummy.
• I work for an employer who sponsors a fitness program that pits employees against each other in a bid to win Mall Bucks, and in order to compete seriously I need to get 45 minutes of aerobic exercise a day.
• There's no way I'd have time to get 45 minutes of aerobic exercise a day if I did not do so during the time I am watching S-Boogie. Walking is about the only thing I can do with her in tow.
  
• And on top of all that, my mom is an addictive walker, which gives me reason to believe that it's genetic.

So, now that we've established that I have no choice in this matter, you may be wondering what it is that makes walkers so opressed. A fair enough question, by which I mean you should feel stupid for asking it. I'll humor you, though. I present the following:

• Cars do not notice pedestrians. This has led to many near-death experiences in which a car turning a corner has threatened to run over me and my innocent child. Now, I'm not saying that when I'm driving I don't run over pedestrians, but we're not talking about me as a driver; we're talking about me as an opressed walker.
• Stores are not made to be accessed by walkers, particularly not walkers pushing strollers. There is never a walkway leading from the sidewalk to the store entrance, which means that I have to weave in and out of parked and not-parked cars in the parking lot. The first complaint holds as true in parking lots as on streets, by the way.
• Don't even get me started on the various parts of Orem that have no sidewalk.
• Snow. No one bothers to clear their sidewalk of it. Oh, sure, we'll send out a plow to clear the roads for drivers, but who cares about walkers? And I'm not talking about sidewalks in front of peoples' houses. I'm talking about fobbin' State Street. These are businesses who don't bother to shovel their sidewalks because, you know, who the fob cares about fobbin' walkers? (Pardon my language. I'm getting rather angry typing this.) Have you ever tried to push a stroller over day-old hard lumpy snow? Either S-Boogie gets shaken baby syndrome or I give up on the sidewalk and head out onto the plowed street, braving the oncoming traffic. Remember those cars who don't see pedestrians? Yeah, this is probably not a very safe solution to the problem. Today after making it down eight blocks of State Street I came back up Fourth East so that at least I could walk in the street safely, which I did the whole way because the sidewalks were even worse.

I'm going to begin my revolution with a boycott of all the stores on State Street who don't shovel their sidewalks. The nice thing is that I have never shopped at any of these stores anyway. Now I will not shop there with purpose.

I would call up the Dean of Students at BYU to schedule a protest, but as luck would have it BYU tends to do a pretty darn good job of keeping its sidewalks clear.