Attack of the Lollipop Man! No Joke!

Now contrary to my predisposition to embellish and exaggerate stories which I get from my

Mother’s side, I will begin this by holding my hand on the Bile and swearing this as THE TRUTH THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT.

The day began like any other. I got up and popped on my trainers and began my run. Everything was going fine. I was listening to my tunes and toddling along in my own little world. Usually on my run I see one of the things that annoy me more than anything in the world. That, is a lollipop man/lady positioned on a set of traffic lights. It has long been a pet peeve of mine and something that I don’t understand. Well at a crossing by me there are two lollipop men positioned. Not one, but two! It’s ridiculous. All they do it press the button, walk into the middle of the road and wait. The traffic light is doing everything for them. There are hundreds of extremely dangerous roads near schools that I’ve seen throughout my life with no road supervision and then they are positioning some at a traffic light. A set of lights whose job it is to control the stop start of a vehicle. If anyone knows the reason for this I’d be happy to know it. It may just be me being ignorant. It’s not that I don’t care about the safety of children, but if children are walking to school unsupervised then that says to me they know the rules of the road, and how to use the traffic light system.

This one particular day I was running along, and decided to change my route and cross the road at a particular set of lights where one of these lollipop men were positioned. Now I don’t know what led to the following event occurring, but even half an hour after it I was still thinking “Did that just happen?”

I get to the crossing and I’m doing my little static jog waiting for the cars to roll pass. I noticed the lollipop man move to position himself next to me. To be honest I just assumed there were some kids behind me. Then he stepped forward a little and moved just so slightly in my way. This confused me. Anyway, I side stepped a little and began moving out, as I noticed the cars were clearing and I could get across. I heard a voice over my music say.

“Wait.”

I looked at him and thought; obviously he’s not talking to me. Looked back at the cars, and then heard again.

“Wait.”

It was then I looked around and it was just me and him! Oh my God, he was actually going to try and walk me across the road. He thought a 28 year old woman needed help to cross the road already being assisted by traffic lights. I wasn’t going to be dictated to by  a lollipop man on a power trip.  The road cleared and I thought, I’m off. As I stepped off the curb to continue over the road, I felt a massive tug on my hoody that pulled me back about 3 steps. I stood and stared at this guy, and even before I could begin with:

“What the hell are you doing?”

He started in on me! I was stood in the middle of a crossing being yelled at by a lollipop man. This hadn’t happened since I was in Primary School! I literally stood there in such shock.

“I knew you were going to run across the road.” He said. “We are here for your safety, not ours. If you go running across the road and get hit by a car it will be me who gets the blame, not you because you’ll be dead.”

He then pulled out a pad of paper while shouting at me and proceeded to ask me my Name, and what school I was in.

It was that question that shocked me back to reality. I’m thinking maybe it’s my height. I’ve mentioned it before, and I know that most secondary school pupils would tower over me. When you couple this with my podgy exterior which may resemble that of an adolescent girl who still carries around her puppy fat, I could almost say yeah, from a distance I could be mistaken as a school kid. He however was up close and personal, was he stupid?! He was seriously intimidating me as well, and I thought if I’m scared what the hell does this do to school kids.

I nearly said nothing and ran off, but I though I’m not having this guy speak to me like this. So I gave it back to him.

“Are you crazy!! You could have got me killed pulling me back like that. I’m 28 years old and am fully capable of crossing the road. How the hell could you get me confused with a kid?  If I ever see you grabbing a child the way you just grabbed me, I will report you to whoever it is that lollipop people work for. Now if you don’t mind I’ll just use the traffic lights to get across!”

To be fair I didn’t wait for a reply and just ran away. I mean I wanted to say something which I’m glad I did, but if  he’ll grab me by the scruff for just crossing the road, what would he do now I’ve shouted at him. That lollipop if a pretty handy weapon! My advice any short tubby people out there, just beware the wrath of the lollipop man!