No. But forcing people to bob and weave in order to avoid injury just so you can keep your shoes dry is entitlement. I’m not really sure why this is such a hard concept to grasp.
Suppose someone were carrying a rolled up newspaper down the sidewalk. Now suppose, for argument’s sake, that it was a comically oversized newspaper. So big, in fact, that if forced people walking in the other direction into the street. The newspaper wielder’s excuse? “I have a right to read the news!” Would this be OK with you?
I grasp it quite well. It is entirely possible to use a golf umbrella in such a manner so as not to force anyone to bob and weave.
As for the newspaper, who said anything about a giant one? A regular one, rolled tightly, and jammed up someone’s nose can do an alarming amount of damage. It’d all in how you use it. Just like the umbrella.
If someone with a regular sized umbrella pokes me in the eye, do I get to call all umbrella users jerks, and decry their entitlement?
You have one case of one incident of a person being poked in the eye with an umbrella. Not a golf umbrella, at least as far as we know. And under what circumstances, we have no idea. And based on this, people who use golf umbrellas are jerks? That is some seriously lame-assed shit, dude.
You realize that if this turns out to have been a regular umbrella, you have completely undercut whatever point you might have had, right?
Based on the scant information in your link, it seems reasonable to assume that the stab was intentional. No one is arguing that people should be allowed to stab folks in the eye with an umbrella.
Quite true. It’s just that some people fail to do so. And when they do, it’s much worse than a normal sized umbrella. Even if they are being careful, there’s just not much room for the big umbrella to go.
Let me get this straight. Are you saying that other people are not in fact inconvenienced by being frequently bumped and annoyed by oversized umbrellas on crowded city sidewalks? As in, we are all making up our complaints out of whole cloth?
Or are you merely saying that it is theoretically possible that umbrella users COULD bob and weave their umbrella so as to not to bother others?
Because if it is the latter, I agree with you as far as that carefully worded statement goes. In a similar vein, it is also theoretically possible for someone to use their cell phone in a movie theater, or church in a way that doesn’t bother others. However, that is not what actually happens. Just because it is conceptually possible to use an obnoxious object in a polite way does not mean that people actually carry that out. Just as I think most of us would agree that it is only polite to turn off your cell phone in a movie theater, it is also reasonable to expect people to leave golf umbrellas on the golf course.
Not at all. I’ve merely shown that the concern over getting an eye poked out isn’t complete hyperbole. Would you care to display your utter stupidity by now claiming that eye injuries are of no concern?
Exactly. I gave up using umbrellas decades ago. I use waterproof mascara, wear a raincoat and just walk in the rain. That way I can slalom my way through throngs of umbrellas of all sizes.
Absent context, your cite is meaningless. The OP is complaining about people with open golf umbrellas on public sidewalks. I was asking for cites of such occurrences. Do you claim this to be the case in your cite? Do you really believe that on incidence indicates a trend?
There are literally millions, if not billions of items that can cause serious injury if stabbed on the eye. Why single out golf umbrellas?
Have a little chat with DianaG. She’s the one who called it hyperbole.
Because the pokey bits are right at eye height? And because they are most often used in heavily populated areas? And because the people carrying them have created a huge blind spot for themselves? And because wind can cause them to move unpredictably?
Sorry, but a rolled up newspaper just does not meet this criteria.
Cite?? Are you a fucking idiot? What kind of citation do you expect me to produce? A link to a front page story in the USA Today article about the rash of giant umbrella bumpings in major cities? A study by a Harvard psychologist about the damage done to society by self-absorbed assholes who sit around in slack-jawed disbelief that larger umbrellas just don’t fit on crowded city streets?
I don’t know if you’re drunk, ignorant, or both, but there is seriously something wrong with you if you believe that people would just sit around and construct an unfounded conspiracy theory about large umbrellas being an annoyance to others on the street.
Cite… give me a break. We should request a citation that you are not a moron.
And if you haven’t been hit with an umbrella before, it’s probably because the ten-foot canopy you call an umbrella has kept all the normal people with normal sized umbrellas from even approaching your immediate vicinity.
OK, take a look here. That’s an abstract of an article indicating that the severity of umbrella spoke eye injuries should not be overlooked. Obviously, if someone has written such an article, this type of injury is far from unknown.
Certainly other objects can potentially cause eye injuries, few of them are designed so that when they are used as intended their sharpest points are at eye level. Some people are bad at controlling their umbrellas, and the trend of people using larger even more unweildy umbrellas makes these people all the more dangerous.
The OP certainly ranted a little, but this is the pit. The people rushing to the defence of dangerous umbrella users seem to have some kind of chip on their shoulder, or else an affinity for conflict. To each his own.
Didn’t we cover this? If you define “hit by” as *injured * by, hardly ever. If you define “hit by” as tapped, smacked, donked, jostled, or otherwise subjected to unwelcome physical contact with, well then… pretty much every time it rains.
Ya got anything, anything at all, that says that all these injuries occurred on a city sidewalk?
Good Lord, do you even read your own cites? That one is about umbrella tips. How the fuck are the tips at eye level for anyone of normal height? Do you really contend that people are carrying around golf umbrellas with the outer rim at chest level? Even if they were, how would the tip find its way to someone else’s eye? Has anyone in this thread complained about umbrella tips? Are the tips of golf umbrellas more dangerous than the tips of regular umbrellas? Is your cite about golf umbrellas, or regular umbrellas? Why do you assume that the default umbrella is a golf umbrella? It doesn’t say golf umbrella. It says umbrella. Which completely undercuts the OP’s complaint, and yours as well, if they are the same.
Are you complaining about regular umbrellas? If so, you are in the wrong thread.
To recap : Until you can connect your cites to golf umbrellas causing injuries on city sidewalks, your cites are shite. Can you connect them to golf umbrellas?
Ever taken a subway? Been to a concert? Football game? Ever been “tapped, smacked, donked, jostled, or otherwise subjected to unwelcome physical contact?” Even if it isn’t raining?
I honestly don’t understand how you’re managing this. Only last week, I walked from Picadilly to Monument in the rain without an umbrella (and it was bad raid) and was certainly never hit by an umbrella.
Perhaps you’re not walking assertively enough and jerks are hitting you with umbrellas because they see you as a pushover?
Let me help you out here, because you seem really lost.
If you jostle me on a crowded subway car, that’s just life. If you jostle me on a virtually empty subway car, it’s because you’re taking up more than your fair share of space, and intruding upon mine. This makes you an asshole.
The same principle applies with umbrellas. A normal sized one is an unfortunate concession to the weather. A Ginormotron 9000 model is you taking way, waaaaaaay more than your share of space. And somehow I’m thinking that if you’re that person, you don’t wait for rain to behave like an asshole.
