Idiots on Escalators: Theory and Practice

Okay: Here's something that really, really annoys us. We mean really gets our dander up. It's almost galactically irksome, in fact. We speak, naturally, of idiots incapable of understanding elevator etiquette.

For some reason, dear reader, there number is legion. It's as if demonstration of proper escalator technique were as rare as a bald eagle. Or the crown jewels. Or a feminist with a sense of humor.

We mean, come on: How difficult is it to understand the proper use of the noble escalator? Why do so many people seem so darned clueless about it?

If any of our readers are, as the politically correct folks say, developmentally retarded when it comes to the escalator, allow us to offer you the unofficial rules. Those standing still on the escalator should stay on its right side. Those walking should pass on the left.

That's it. No stick shift. No U-turns. No coughing and turning your head to one side.

How unremittingly simple! How undeniably effective!

And yet sundry morons throughout this great nation (and elsewhere, we'd wager) have somehow managed to eschew elevator etiquette. If you ask us, we think it ought to be taught in school, instead of sex education. After all, failure to heed elevator decorum is a far weightier problem in this country than teenage pregnancy. Although we'd wager that somehow there's a link between the two. (Ever seen a pregnant 13-year-old on an escalator? We rest our case.)

The typical escalator moron seems to be a fellow in his late teens, who's too busy attempting to impress a prospective girlfriend to trouble himself with any regard for others. Standing on the escalator's left side, he's gleefully chatting up some useless bimbo, discussing the finer points of the aural detritus typically known as "rock music," oblivious to the fact that he's blocking a veritable Russian Army from walking up the escalator.

As far as we, the crack young staff of "The Hatemonger's Quarterly," are concerned, you are fully within your rights to bop this doofus on the head. This hormone-infested tyro is stopping progress, and for that, he deserves nothing less than a savage, savage beating.

In fact, if Barack Obama would merely say that moronic escalator-misusers should receive 5-10-year sentences for their crimes against humanity, we'd vote for the fellow. That would certainly make up for the fact that he's an insufferable egotist with cloudy views on foreign policy. And, as The New Yorker ably demonstrated, a Muslim terrorist.