WOODBURY – Move out of the freaking way!

This thought crosses my mind every time I get stuck behind slow walkers in the halls of Nonnewaug.

Stuck in a crowd of hallway slugs, I unlocked my phone to text my best friend:

“OMG I’m stuck in another crowd of sloths”
“ugh I feel ur pain, I can’t stand these slugs
“yeah seriously now I’m gonna be late to –”

Before I could finish the text – bang, I bumped into someone.

Wait a minute. Am I the problem?

Listen, I’m guilty as much as anyone. I think everyone can say they’ve been stuck in their phones walking down the hallway one too many times.

We’re already not allowed to be on our phones for the time we’re in class. Obviously, people aren’t going to put their phones away for our few precious minutes in the halls. Not being able to be on your phone for seven hours besides lunch would be tragic, so phones are in the hallway to stay.

But just the other day, I was walking in the hallway and a girl’s head was buried in her phone in the center of the hallway. I couldn’t even get around her.

I think some people need to normalize looking up in the hallway, not being glued to their phones, and actually learn how to walk.

Freshman Annalie Taylor tries to stay off her phone in the hallway because she knows how much chaos phone users in the hallway cause.

“I hate slow walkers. They always make me late to class and it’s really annoying when they’re on their phone,” Taylor said. “I try to stay off my phone in the hallway.”

Junior Trevor Santopietro thinks people need to learn how to walk.

“They piss me off because they’re slow,” Santopietro said. “Like, get the heck out of the way if you don’t know how to walk.”

Besides people just being on their phone, some are just genuinely slow and can’t walk correctly.

Freshman Cash Medonis has a legitimate reason for being tortoise-like.

“Slow walkers are really bad, but I also think I walk pretty slow because I have really short legs,” Medonis admitted.

Besides people having their heads into their phones and having short legs, we need to normalize not having a whole conversation in the middle of the hallway.

By the time you’re done freaking out about what was just on the Nonnewaug Confessions Instagram page, three minutes of just standing in the middle of the hallway have gone by. Now there’s a giant traffic jam and now all these people are going to be late.

Is there a solution? Here’s a brilliant one: We should make a phone lane (or a slow walker lane) in the hallway. The slowpokes can saunter over there while the rest of us get a move on.

Okay maybe not the best idea … but the problem still stands! So figure it out and move along.

This is the opinion of Chief Advocate reporter Audrey Doran, a freshman at Nonnewaug.