My street is too narrow to be two-way.  But it is anyway.  The Chicago traffic department, I have been told, has done a study and determined the street should be two way.  So it is.

It doesn't matter that just about every car that regularly parks on the street ends up with their side view mirror ripped off.  The traffic department did a study and their findings showed that the street should be two-way, so clearly, it is supposed to be two-way.

Every morning, people get in these bizarre power plays in front of my house. This is how it goes:  two cars traveling in opposite directions, on a street too narrow to let them both pass without incident, meet at a point and stop.

Tense, running a bit late and already likely in a bad mood, these people begin some sort of bizarre stand-off. Honking begins. No one moves.  People roll down their windows and scream. People will sit there for a long time, defiant and determined not to be the one to back down.

I've even seen a cop get into one of these ridiculous scenarios because a line of traffic half the street long couldn't get it together and back up so he could pass. That cop was pissed. He turned on his sirens and eventually got out of the cop car and started screaming at the car closest to him -- the car that couldn't move because there was a line of cars behind it.  The people at the end of that line, the car that needed to move first so everyone else could back up, were too busy talking on the phone to notice the melee that was unfolding ahead of them.

Most mornings, I take my coffee cup and go watch this slice of humanity. It reminds me, every day, that the vast majority of the time, a little cooperation would get everyone a lot farther along.