Now is the time in my web page when i Perplect.  

Sidewalk Etiquette.  So i am walking down the sidewalk the other night and i come upon 5 people walking towards me.    I am far to the right, against the building and i see them coming forward.  There is one person directly in front of me. We keep walking and we approach each other.  None of the five have moved from their walk pattern.  As we get even closer i move closer to the wall.  i am rubbing an arm against it now.  The person directly in front of me still has not moved.  Not really a problem.   Yet.  And then as we come just up to where we are going to need to do something or collide,  she gives me about 3 inches and a look.  The look says something along the lines of 'what the hell are you still doing in my way, asshole.'

  I quickly glance up.  Yes, there are five of them and they are occupying the entire sidewalk. there is nowhere i could be.  And yet i am getting a look.  I am a little perturbed. But by turning my shoulders to the side and hunching my butt up and pointing it at the wall, i am able to get by without touching her.  
   Now you might think that my problem in this perplection is just that she was rude and possessed poor sidewalk etiquette.  In this you would be right, i think. in my opinion it was her job to get out of they way. to drop back behind her group so that i was not inconvenienced as much as i was. but this is not what i am here to discuss.

My question would be rather. why is it her job to get out of the way.  if  i and one other person are walking down the road it is obvious that neither of us really has the right of way.  that one or both of us will make the effort to get out of the way.  common etiquette would say that this is true.  being polite Canadians this is our job.  so take the one person that would not get out of my way.   why is it her job to get out of my way?  she is a person, i am a person.  why aren't we in the same position as the other situation?  this is easy.  or at least it seems easy.  she is with a group of people, and because she is a with a group of people she must accept the group of people as being with her.  she is responsible for moving out of the way. 
    once again, why?  by being with people she accepts the responsibilities of the group she is with?  there is some sort of joint sidewalk etiquette that she has signed up for tacitly by being there? this makes it her job instead of the job of some other person in the group to make a path for me to get through?  why could this be? what if she is with a group of people but chooses not to accept this as a rule?  what happens?

   am i wrong for being annoyed at her for not getting out of the way? granted she was in my way and she was in a group of people that were in the way and consuming the entire sidewalk.  but, is she any worse than any one of the others.  is the fact that i was already sticking to the left enough to exonerate them for not making a route?  did they automatically shift the responsibility for giving way to the outermost person of the grouping?  i suppose it is also possible that they just didn't care either.  any one of them might have been in the outermost position and not moved either.  but....maybe i should just be annoyed the same amount but divided by five?  so now i am annoyed a little bit by each of the five.  but four of them have done nothing to me.  

how can my head start spinning so much over just having to squeeze into a window to let some inconsiderate people by?

i don't know.  is it a precursor of the other problems in out society that some people do not accept their sidewalk responsibilities?  i don't know.  she looked far to straight laced to be a fear of random acts of violence to me, but one can never truly know can one?