The Worst Crosswalk In The World, or How I Spent My Day

So I ventured out of the house alone today for the first time since I moved to Dallas. Yeah, I'm kind of a recluse. I was meeting up with friends at a coffee shop, which was a few blocks away from me. A few blocks... and the world's worst crosswalk. No joke. I have only crossed it twice before, and those times I had people with me. This time though, I was alone. And terrified.



See, I already have a fear of crossing the street. Paired with a fear of leaving the house alone. Paired with a fear of getting hit by cars. It's not nice. I'm kind of a mess.

Anyways, so this crosswalk. You come up to it, and there's no crosswalk button. Hmm.... Oh wait! There it is! ...On an island in the middle of the road.... with no white lines to safely guide you to it. Seriously, it's just floating out there with a bunch of unprotected space between you and it. You have to walk through the middle of the turning lane to get to it. The right lane, where people don't even LOOK.

So you get over there, and hit the button, and wait half your life to be let across. And then you have to cross more open, unprotected space to get back on the actual crosswalk to cross the street. And this is like, the LONGEST crosswalk. You can't actually cross it before the "Don't walk" sign comes back on. You have to run for your life to get to the next island. At least this one is attached to the crosswalk; a small miracle. But neither of these islands are even necessary. At all.
This is what the crosswalk should look like:




But instead it looks like this:



I barely made it there and back alive.

Anyways, when I showed up, I was early so I ordered my drink alone. Did I mention I have a fear of checking out or purchasing things alone? Yeah. So anyway, the Starbucks had apparently changed their ordering system, and all the baristas were still trying to figure out how to put in orders.




I finally got my drink and sat down to wait. Although, I probably should have paid more attention to my surroundings, because my friends were staring at me for a good minute before I noticed them. I felt very silly.

And then we all had a good time and then I endured the torture of the Worst Crosswalk Ever and now I'm here writing about it, because I'm really super cool.