My sister Nicole and I have discussed this on numerous occasions: people are so slow. We don’t mean they are mentally slow, as in “Chele holds Slow Tommy’s hand,” but instead we mean that as a rule, the public physically moves through the world at an achingly slow pace. We see it in Wal Mart, we see it on public streets, we see it in airports. We see people who seem not to care that they are holding up the pace of life, nor do they seem to care if they are chronically late.

This isn’t about driving, which the public largely does too fast, and which raises an even bigger, more ironic question: why are you are driving so fast if you are going to take eight minutes to get from your car door to the front door of Taco Shack? Either you’re in a hurry or you aren’t.

When I see people like this, I conclude that most of them are simply too lazy to pick up the pace, since lugging their extra 80 pounds of body weight has become actual work. This introduces a third, even more complex and baffling irony: if you are overweight, why do you go out of your way to move slowly and park as close as possible to the door at TGI Fridays? Wouldn’t it seem like a smarter plan to park two blocks away, walk at a smart pace, and get at least a few minutes of exercise?

I was walking somewhere downtown the other day and an obese man stepped out in front of me on his way to his car. Not only was he moving insanely slowly, his girth occupied the entire sidewalk, and he seemed to have no idea he was in anyone’s way. Maybe it didn’t occur to him that people might be walking somewhere on it.

This thread started when I re-read a comment on our travel blog from a couple of years ago that said, “I was VERY impressed with how many sights you saw in a single day,” which, quite frankly, wasn’t particularly impressive. I felt that I could have seem more and done more pretty easily.

I just don’t get it. I don’t get the culture of leisure, laziness, and self-indulgence. I don’t understand why you don’t push yourself harder just to be faster and stronger. I don’t understand how you can look at a trail or a hedge maze or a climbing wall or a mountain and say, “I’ll just wait in the car.”