Willing to Die for His Art

Two busy roads intersect near the university. An older man, perhaps in his mid 60s stands directly in the middle of the left lane of a three lane westbound road, trying to take a picture of one of the buildings with a small point-and-shoot 35 mm camera. At first, the traffic is stopped for a red light and everyone's happy. Then the light turns. The woman in the van the man is standing in front of laughs a little at first, and waits far more patiently than I would have for him to step back out of the street and onto the sidewalk. Instead, he starts to back up, without looking, toward the center lane, attempting to get a better shot of the building. The woman taps her horn to warn him, still smiling. He stops, turns, and starts screaming obscenities at the woman who probably just saved his life, and purposely steps to the line between the left lane and the center lane, effectively preventing both lanes of traffic from moving and goes back to framing his shot, turning his back to a stunned driver who just tried to do him a good deed, and not even looking to make certain that the driver in the other lane was going to be able to stop for him.