So I was riding my scooter into Boston yesterday for a doctor’s appointment. As I was approaching the end of the Longfellow Bridge I was riding in the bike lane – a perfectly legal thing to do, especially since the Registry of Motor Vehicles considers a scooter a “motorized bike” and specifically states on the registration form that you’re allowed to use bike lanes on roads (just not on\u00a0bike paths that are off-road).<\/p>\n
Anyway, I was stopped at the light at Charles Circle behind some other bicycles when I heard what could have been Moon Unit Zappa behind me:<\/p>\n
“You know, bike lanes aren’t meant for scooters.”<\/p>\n
Actually, it doesn’t translate well on the screen. It’s all about the inflection. She said it as a statement versus a question, but still stressed the last word. Specifically, the last syllable of the last word: “ers.”<\/p>\n
So, it sounded more like:<\/p>\n
“You kno-ow, bike lanes aren’t meant for scooo-TERS?!.”<\/p>\n
My response was simple: “Um, yes they are,”<\/p>\n
Hers? “No they’re not.”<\/p>\n
Mine? “Trust me. Look it up.”<\/p>\n
Then, the classic valley response from her:<\/p>\n
“Whatever.”<\/p>\n
Again, it’s all about inflection. It was more:<\/p>\n
“What – everrrrr.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, my mind is thinking, “bitch, mind your own business” (spoken like a contestant on Ru Paul’s Drag Race).<\/p>\n
The light turned green and I revved forward, secretly hoping I was spewing noxious fumes in her tight, bitter face.<\/p>\n
Does that make me a bad person?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So I was riding my scooter into Boston yesterday for a doctor’s appointment. As I was approaching the end of the Longfellow Bridge I was riding in the bike lane – a perfectly legal thing to do, especially since the Registry of Motor Vehicles considers a scooter a “motorized bike” and specifically states on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2514"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2517,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions\/2517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}