“Dear PoPville,
My wife and I were walking along New Hampshire Avenue from DuPont circle towards U Street. For reasons I won’t get into, we were tired, a little out of it, and walking a bike along the sidewalk. A very tall, athletic looking man
in a green t-shirt was on a run and sprinting towards us. My wife was a little farther into the center of the sidewalk than she probably should have been, but she didn’t realize it (was distracted by me and the bike) and definitely would have moved to the side had she realized someone was coming towards us. He was moving very fast, and before I had a moment to alert her, he ran right into her. There was actually enough room on the sidewalk that he could have called out “excuse me,” slowed slightly, or moved around her. Instead, I saw him look at her and make the apparently conscious decision to ram her with his shoulder and keep running. He was probably about a foot taller and significantly heavier and more muscular, maybe by fifty pounds (I’m the same height and size as my wife, and also a woman, so this could easily have happened to me as well).
It was a small moment, and I wish we hadn’t been in the way, but I felt really upset that it happened. Who knows what the runner was dealing with that he would act that way — certainly it’s been a stressful week for many. I hope folks reading this can take a moment to be kinder to each other.“