Cold, Cruel World

Yesterday morning, while getting my routine morning sandwich for breakfast outside my office building, I noticed something rather un-routine.

A car was stopped in the alley just before merging onto the main road. Two people -- a man and a woman, though it doesn't matter -- were standing in front of it. Slightly obscured from my view was a little bicycle propped on its kickstand directly parked in front of the stopped car. And the two people, whom I presume were previously seated in the car, were staring down at the wailing elderly lady.

"Oh, it hurts so much! You have to take me to the hospital now. Call an ambulance! I must have broken something. I need you to take me to the hospital."

Now, understanding how disobedient people are to the traffic rules -- and this trend is increasingly so as you move further away from the capital city, and as your vehicle size gets smaller -- is it bad of me that I automatically assumed that this elderly lady (whom I'm sure is the nice grandmother of some cute little children) was simply blindly disregarding the traffic laws and haphazardly rode her bike oblivious to the fact that the road does not belong to her?

And is it doubly worse that I had no sympathy for her and actually felt that she deserved it? Even without having seen the actual accident to see whose fault it was?

Well, I don't care. Let that be a lesson to all of you on bicycles that ride all wobbly while trying to mingle in with the scooters, cars, trucks, and busses.

And for the record, she did not really appear to be injured. And none of the 10+ rubberneckers seemed to be particularly concerned for her wellbeing either. So I think she was just trying to milk it for all it was worth, possibly to buy something nice for her nice grandkids.