A good, responsible, upright, able, learned, educated, proficient, qualified, capable, select, choice, commendable citizen follows all rules that he/she knows of, traffic rules included.

And of course after acquiring my citizenship (a laminated piece of paper with my picture and basic information that I photocopy once in a while to fill up one form or the other) not so long ago, I wished to be a good, responsible, upright citizen, but never the more than that one time I was crossing a road using the zebra crossing.

The reason I got so self-conscious of being a citizen is that after crossing the same road every day for quite some time now, I had gotten used to crossing that busy road ignoring a broken traffic sign while avoiding traffic on my very own or along with two three strangers that happen to need to cross at the same time as me. But that day, it was different. The traffic lights were working. They were green for the vehicles and red for the pedestrians.

That time, I must confess, I waited for the light to turn green so that the vehicles would stop and I could walk. And I was not alone. Everyone on my side of the road was waiting for the green light.

But the people on the other side of the road were crossing the road completely ignoring the sign. Or so everyone on my side thought.

All of us waited for some time for the light to turn green then, we didn’t. We crossed like we always had.

It was only after we got to the other side of the road that I saw the traffic lights from there. The traffic lights on my end of the road showed the vehicles sign as green and the pedestrian sign as green as well. The people on the other side of the road were following the traffic rules as well. In fact, we were the ones who didn’t follow them and kept waiting infinitely.

Not bad, right?

The things we have do not work and when we think they work, they just pretend to work. Atleast they were pretending.

Definitely not bad I say.