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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

One Way Streets

Ugh. You know, I was going to go to bed, and then I remembered something that I really wanted to talk about, and that's one way streets. I don't know what it's like in other countries, except for Canada, but here in America we all stay to the right side of the road. In fact, there are 165 countries that drive on the right side of the road, while there are only 75 which drive on the left side of the road. Why?

Do these people need to feel so special that they can't do what's right (no pun intended) and drive on the correct side of the road? Some might argue that it's culture, but I disagree. I think that the British (Yes, them. I know they're not the only ones who do, but most of the others are derived from British colonies, or still are, quite frankly, so that impact has almost forced them to drive on the left side of the road.) have a physiological need to be different, or trendy, or... whatever. I really don't care what the reason is, but today I decided to look around my school and notice which kids (freshman, mainly) were having problems going to the right sides of hallways.

Kids from Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries stayed on the right side of the hallway, (except for those who stopped in the middle to have a conversation, ugh. Don't get me started.), while kids from India and a few kids I know who are from Western Europe stuck to the left side of the hallway.

When I got home, I looked it up. It just so happens that India is a left-driving country, while countries like Brasil or Spain are right-driving countries. Huh.

So maybe we do learn things from our parents, things that we really can't control all that much. I'm sure that we all have odd little things that we've picked up from them, I personally found out that certain words that I thought were real weren't after I turned twelve. It was quite a heart-breaker.

But I decided to branch out with my theory that we learn them from our parents, which may be painstakingly obvious to you, so much so that you're sitting there going; "Duh, Siobhan. Can you please pick up a valid point now?" No, anonymous voice. I cannot. I decided that I would test it with animals.

No, I didn't inject them with botox or anything ridiculous like that. Instead, I put one of my cats at the bottom of the stairs, where he was eating a few treats I had left for him. I then waited for him to finish and look up at me, and then walked down the stairs, sticking to the right side for four times, then the left side for four times. I did this for each of my cats. ("Get a life, Siobhan!" I'm working on it...)

The results showed that the cats showed a preference for staying to their right, my left, just as American culture would have it. Now, unfortunately I can't test this with any British cats, but, if I could, I'm sure that it would be about the same as far as results.

That's about all I have to say on the matter, I just really wanted to get it out of my brain before it exploded with data that I always manage to forget to write down. I'm expecting tomorrows blog to be really long, I have twenty or so post-its piling up with things that I wanted to talk about, this being only one of the post-its. Make that nineteen to go!

Have a nice night.
-Siobhan

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