I was minding my own business, sipping on my very caffeinated drink, contemplating important life decisions – should I take the train that stops 8 blocks away from the office, or one? – and generally minding my own Monday Morning business when a voice calls out, “EXCUSE ME!” and a woman tries – unsuccessfully – to push me out of the way, rushing in front of me to get down the stairs.

I stopped to allow her to go, I figured someone in such a hurry must either be running away from something, or running to something. Since it didn’t look like she was running away from anything, it might just be best to let her run to whatever she was in a hurry to get to and save myself some coffee stains.

I think she realised how rude she was being so she said I should go ahead, except, she didn’t say this politely, it was more along the lines of “No, no, go, go, go, go, go!” with each go getting louder and more urgent.

Figuring she really needed to go I indicated again that she should go ahead of me.

“Just go, I’m going to be late for work!” she said.

So, I went, taking the stairs one at a time, making a point to take my time and savor each of the 12 stairs. I familiarized myself with them, possibly naming a few of them along the way, as opposed to my usual morning stair-skipping trot.

As I smiled to myself the thought came to me, this is why I don’t like interacting with people. Now, I’m a story in this woman’s life. She’s going to go into work, grumpy and complaining about the girl in the yellow skirt who took her time down the stairs. She’ll tell her friends how I refused to go, even though she told me to go ahead in front of her and they will all shake their heads at my delinquency.

Of course, this is all in my head and by the time she gets to her destination she’d have forgotten all about me. But, just in case, here’s to all the ladies-in-a-hurry. Next time you want to push someone aside, just go ahead of them, or they might write a blog post about you.