To the Maine Woman Who Cared More About Her Phone Than Her Dog

Dear Unknown Woman,

Right off the bat, because it's 2023 and you have to both protect your reputation and fully spell things out -- your gender doesn't matter to me, I'm just using it to specifically identify you. I don't care if you're a man, woman, alien, elephant, cockroach, the Buddha, the Dalai Lama -- I'd still call you out for this.

Because not only did you put your own dog at risk, but you also put me and other drivers in the area where you were walking your dog (that you clearly couldn't have cared less about, at least at that moment) in a really uncomfortable and dangerous position.

Let me recap for you, since your nose was too deep into your phone for you to even notice what the situation was.

You were at a street corner in Brunswick, Maine -- a street corner that had so much going on, between an unusual amount of diverted traffic in the area and the insane amount of construction on that road causing all of that diverted traffic.

And since the workers in that area weren't exactly lighting the world on fire at different points (no offense to any construction workers and I'm not taking shots, but I literally observed someone in that same area a day before instructing a car to take a turn while an oncoming car was headed that exact way), it was a situation where anything could've happen at any moment.

Which blows my mind even more at the fact you were paying zero attention to and had zero regard for your adorable little pup. Because at the street corner with your dog on a retractable leash (and by the looks of it, the leash wasn't retracted worth a damn), you were laser-focused more on whatever was going on with your phone than your dog's well-being.

I approached the intersection with your dog pacing around the edge of the sidewalk, with you still fully focused on your phone, and had to be prepared and anticipate that your dog at any moment could've darted out into the street as I (or anyone else) was driving by.

And, granted, anticipation of anything is half the game with it comes to driving, but it was still easily preventable if you paid as much attention to your pup as you were your phone.

I'll just end this by saying that I hope you and your dog made it home safely, and I genuinely (with no amount of sarcasm in this sentence) hope that you were making a mistake in casually using your phone at that moment as opposed to receiving some kind of horrible, life-altering news.