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March 22, 2017
Wednesday, April 10At approximately 12:47 pm this Wednesday afternoon, local UChicago first-years Timothy Burnside and Felix Gardner became locked in a stunning display of over-politeness mixed with sheer incompetence. According to reports, Burnside and Gardner had approached the slightly narrow pathway leading from near Cobb hall to the Regenstein Llibrary from opposite directions. Both appeared to be preoccupied, likely texting that cute girl from their respective Ssosc classes with whom that neither had any remote chance. with. As a result, neither man appeared to look up and notice the other’s approach until a collision was near-imminent. At thatis moment, disaster struck.
Preceded by a simultaneous “excuse me” (indicating that this was in fact Chicago and not New York), Burnside moved to his left to give Gardner room, while Gardner moved to his right. Seeing that Gardner’s right was Burnside’s left, the two were face-to-face once again, their positioning predicament still unresolved. To correct this, after a synchronized “my bad,”, Gardner and Burnside each shifted to the opposite side from where they had just stood, which unsurprisingly did little to improve the situation. The deadlock remained.
This went on for several minutes, during which a battle of wits had quickly ensued, with Burnside trying to anticipate where Gardner would next position himself, and vice-versa. Occasionally, the two would stand completely still, waiting to see what the other’s next move would be, before eventually giving up and moving simultaneously once again. Both even resortedulted to basketball-esque “juke” techniques, but to no avail. Their synchronization was still perfect, which, according to an anonymous observer, “would have been cool if it wereasn’t so dumb.”
By this time, a sizable crowd of students remained backed up behind the two, unable to pass due to the standoff taking place. Simply walking around on the grass did not appear to be a valid option, as, according to sources, the grass was “completely soaked and kind of gross-looking.”. By this time, both Gardner and Burnside, visibly sweating from the sheer effort of not being able to walk past someone, gave a synchronized and exhausted call for help. Within ten minutes, UCPD had arrived on the scene, and were able to carefully separate both students, who agreed to plan their future schedules so there would be no chance of the two ever crossing paths with the other again.
Upper-level university officials are looking into installing wider pathways in case a similar incident happens in the future. On a related note, a similar situation occurred earlier this morning at Northwestern University, except instead of being blocked by another person, a student found a large mirror in his path.
