I have lived in America since I was 11. I still have difficulty with jaywalking and will wait there at an intersection in the dark, with no traffic coming, because that’s what we’ve agreed upon as a society.
It does make me frustrated, seeing people merge into and out of locked lanes, fail to use blinkers, steal someone else’s possessions, cut in lines, play audio without headphones in public transit, walk line abreast and block whole hallways and sidewalks, and endless other individualist, exceptionalist actions.
But that is how America is. And people wouldn’t know from looking at me that I grew up in rural Japan and that I’m silently seething at these sorts of things. I grit my teeth and I don’t admonish people for this nonsense because I’m a defenseless disabled queer woman, but I’m thinking it so hard that I hope they get bloody noses.