Have you put yourself in a funny or ridiculous situation in the middle of the street, looking like a candid country person that knows nothing about the modern civilization?
Well, I did.
It happened when I went to a little town in South Carolina, in the United States, last may.
Some of you know that I use to do my workouts on a daily basis, trying to keep a healthy lifestyle. During my brief stay in the States, I kept doing some exercise, jogging a couple of miles in the early morning around the city.
All of you know that we, as Salvadorans, aren’t known precisely for obey the laws, even the transit signals.
Instead, Americans seemed to me very respectful about the transit signals (at least those who lived in that town).
For example, they have semaphores for cars and for pedestrians in every cross-street, and they don’t cross the street when the light is red, even if there isn’t any car in a hundred meters around: they wait at the sidewalk for the green light.
So, the first morning that I went jogging I told myself: “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”, and when I reached the first crossing, I stopped and waited for the pedestrian semaphore to turn green.
I must say that at that time, by the dawn early light, there were neither cars nor people in the streets, but I kept waiting for the green light for one, two, three minutes… and nothing happened.
Finally, I changed my mind and decided to cross the street even during the red light.
And suddenly… I noticed that just beside me, in the lower part of the semaphore’s pole, there was a tiny box with a button, and a little label that said: “press the button to cross”.
You can imagine what happened in the end: I pushed the button… and crossed the street.
Looking back on the story, I think if I were another person looking at me, standing for no apparent reason in the sidewalk in the middle of a lonely city, waiting for who knows what, I’d probably wonder “is that man dumb or something?”
Well... it happens you leave your little village to go to a modern city.
