Dearth of Chivalry.

Really. It must be completely dead in the general population. I was retuning to my car after school, crossing Capitol Boulevard/Ninth Street. The day was hot, somewhat muggy, enveloped in the fumes of at least five lanes of traffic. Heat radiated from the concrete. I was crossing the last few feet, surrounded by my colleagues, my co-instruction seekers. Fellow students of all genders and creeds. Just before we reached the beckoning sidewalk, I heard several quick thumps. I turn around, in case it was my recently acquired books. Alas! So it was.

I knelt speedily, my bare knees pressed into the tarred surface, and began to refill my errant bag with the recently lost articles. I was hampered by people stepping past, by, and even over me. I was able to get out of the road before a hasty Jeep barely bothered to swerve around me. I glared at their backs, the polo-shirted, cargo-panted cad, the Slipknot-torsoed scoundrel, and the V-necked, faux-label bag betoting villainess. (There were others. I choose these three to bear the weight of public scourging.)