This morning a saw a man squeeze through a narrow passage between a massive truck pulling out of a parking garage and a street sign and nearly get squashed. His alternative? Wait 10 seconds or so until the truck passed him. The driver and me just shook our heads. New Yorkers hate to wait. Sometimes it feels like the whole city is tugging at your sleeve telling you to "move it!" There's a particular type of nervous energy that permeates the pedestrians at stoplights as they wait for any gap in traffic to zip across the street. Those moving too slowly - old people, say, or tourists - get swept aside in the whirlwind of motion. Once you adopt the pace of the sidealks, delays become infuriating. Slow walkers looking at their phones as they impede your progress become the object of eye-rolling scorn. A few years ago I had a debilitating back injury which meant I could barely walk. Navigating the subway like that gave me a lot of sympathy for people with chronic conditions or who just can't get around like before. As I struggled up the stairs, the masses of legs moved past me like a tide as if I were an inanimate object. Standing in the subway could be excruciating. One day I was grimacing in pain and moving side to side to relieve the pressure and my eye caught a woman who looked over, smiling, and offered me her seat. To this day I'll never forget her.