Bike Tripper

I thought I found my soulmate the other day.

This is a thought I’ve had before, though it generally involves some sort of long-haired, tattooed creature talking intelligibly about his recent tour behind a concert building. Usually I am wrong in this thought, and this time, though very different, was no exception. I thought I found a fellow tripper.

I will henceforth refer to this fellow slipper-upper as "Bike Tripper.” (Cute, no? Bike Tripper and Brick Tripper? Just go with it.) You’ll see why.

I was walking out of the back doors of Ellis Hall the other day, approaching the ramp that leads from College Green to the backside bricks of Ellis. Here comes Bike Tripper, cruising on down the ramp. I can tell that at the end of the ramp, he needs to make a 180-degree turn to come back the other way on the Ellis bricks. He sees me walking toward it, but doesn’t swing out and around me to avoid cutting me off. Instead, he decides to try to impress onlookers (that decision of which I am still struggling with) by slicing into that corner in a ludicrously sharp and quick fashion to cut right through my walking path to the ramp.

As you can probably tell, this doesn’t end well.

Bike Tripper took a tumble, crashing all over his two-wheeled friend and the bricks beneath. And that was his first slip-up.

Now for the second (and in my opinion, worst) slip-up.

I ran over to the poor guy, completely sympathizing with him, as I could most certainly see myself in the exact same situation. But when I approached him and asked if he was alright, Mr. Bike Tripper turned quickly into Mr. Attitude. He waved me away with his scraped-up hand, barking that he was fine and didn’t need any help. I asked him if he was sure, and he didn’t bother to answer, let alone look me in the face or thank me for offering. Bike Tripper just let his bad attitude do the talking.

MANNERS, PEOPLE! Come on! We all mess up sometimes. A bit of embarrassment is no excuse to treat people poorly or cop a ‘tude. The minute Bike Tripper pushed me away like some irritating nonentity, I lost all of my sympathy and respect for him as a fellow tripper.

Some suggestions? Here are my top three:

1. Laugh it off. There’s nothing more uncomfortable for everyone involved when someone makes a slip-up a bigger deal than it needs to be.

2. Handle it graciously. Look, no one’s asking you to be Mother Teresa right after you slam into a concrete wall. But not being a jerk about it would be to everyone’s benefit.

3. Don’t make it worse. So it happened. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. But as a seasoned tripper, I know that it can always get worse – so do whatever you can to avoid that and nurse the situation back normal (or nearly normal).

Do any of you have other suggestions on how to handle an ugly mistake situation?

Until next time, cheers!