The basis for all evil--Olav be damned!

Armageddon is coming and here's how I know it:

People not walking on the right as they pass you. This evil menace is a growing problem in this country -- and, potentially, the world community.

Walking on the right when you pass another creates order from chaos. Form from the Void. Sure, here at WSBA we are sometimes accused of being on the right. But think about it. You’re walking down a hallway on the right because that was how you were taught by your family and re-enforced by society. It worked in the hallways of the school, on the sidewalks, at the mall, walking down the aisles at church. It's a simple standard that makes life easier for all of us.

Everyone was happy and working together. No longer. Let's say I’m walking down the hallway on the right and you come walking down the left side. How do we resolve this problem these days?

First of all, we have to stop at some point and decide on the rules -- yours or mine. This obviously will determine conservative and liberal. We'll use the conservative label for people of believe in the established custom and liberal for those who want to change it. Clearly, passing people in hallways is the birthplace of these terms.

Now we now move into the win-lose mentality, because one of us is going to have to lose our sense that we were walking down the hallway correctly and succumb to the other. If one of us is white and one is black, we may well have a racism or reverse-racism situation where one of us has to be submissive to the other’s views.

Oh, it gets worse. We decide that the other person who is passing on the left was not raised correctly. Resentment and despair builds! Why doesn't that person pass on the right, as our forefathers intended?

Now what? If we're lucky, we just do the little shuffling dance in these situations. If we're unlucky, well, who knows how bad it can get? A stare down, a battle of words, or even a fight. And God help us if one or both persons are gang members, like those Red Hat Society ladies.

Suppose some bureaucracy gets upset over the fact that we can’t decide on the rule, so they make a new set of rules which leads to a decision that we’ll have to have an identity card that says we can’t walk in the same place at the same time, or different days will require walking on different sides of the hallway, or that we will have one way hallways which will be required as a regulation for every public and private building and will be funded at taxpayer expense to make sure it is compatible for all.

Halls in buildings where we are having problems will require a special walking fee (tax) which will be collected at the hallway toll booth and whose profits will go to educating children on the dangers of walking in hostile hallways without a friend.

A third lane will be created called an HOW lane which stands for High Occupancy Walkers which may alleviate the fact that we will ever have to pass each other.

Another problem that has now also been identified in this right-left confrontation has been those who sneak by us on the right and sneak by us on the left. This inconveniences us, and tears down the value of our walk by making sneaking the same as what we are doing -- which is just playing by the rules in society.

It’s bad enough that we have to deal with Mr. or Ms. Lefty over here who has stopped us — oh no, now we have someone else trying to push their way past us. Sounds like it’s time for the hallway border guard who if they catch these people not obeying any rules at all, sends them back to their starting point at the other end of the hall. Problem is, they’ll be sneaking by us again before we even know it.

By the way, according to government hall-walking statistics, there are approximately 12-20 million illegal hall-walkers in this country today. They have closed down at least 12 massive buildings because of their overwhelming stream past law-abiding walkers.

Obviously, when two of us are at a standstill in the hallway, and we’re both intent on winning at the expense of the other, yet we are not violent, we now have gridlock. That means neither of us will get to our place of work, and we’ll just do nothing but stand and face each other down while the real work awaits.

But wait, a Blue-Ribbon Commission is appointed to study the problem of hall-walkers, and all of the reasons we got to this point. Along with Congress, they will arrive at a date by which walkers must withdraw from the confrontation, stand off, and civil war they are experiencing when they meet on the right and left sides of the hall.

Perhaps, former Senator Lee Hamilton, and former President Jimmy Carter will be chosen to head this Blue-Ribbon Panel, which will then have right-side walkers screaming favoritism and politics because these guys most certainly will favor the left-side walkers.

You’ll also hear cries from people who say that in Europe, they also walk on the left, so why don’t we look at that instead of just unilaterally deciding that the right side of the hall is the only place we can walk. None of our global friends are walking on the right, so how can we be so pompous as to think that the right side walkers have cornered the market on how to walk the hallways?

This is much ado about nothing, you say. Okay. How far away can driving on the left-side of the road on a highway be? Think about the chaos , death and destruction that it will cause just because you wanted to drive where you felt like it.

This brings us full-circle to the beginning, where I have decided to stay in my office, and my home, and sneak out only after everyone has left or gone to bed. Yeah, you’ve got it — isolationism. I don’t know if it will work, but at least I can duck the problem of having to have my view of the world changed by left-side walkers.

Can Armageddon be far?