Or, “I once again live through my own stupidity…”
Up and out early to get a brisk/easy 20 in before the day begins. On the way back, I hear the squeal of some oncoming vehicle testing tire adherence through the blind turns up ahead. I’m in no specific danger, hopefully, as I’m on the straight and visible bit of road where the last turn empties out. This means I have a front row seat to the performance as some single, clearly adult-by-age male in the family minivan cuts 3 tires (both left tires and half of the rights) across the centerline as he sweeps through the turn towards me. He’s back on his side of the two lane, double-yellow-striped road maybe 40 yards ahead of me - enough to wake you up, though not enough to induce panic.
So, I pop off.
Nothing really stupid, or so I thought. But, I was on the tail end of the ride, feeling smooth and strong, which let some short-circuit in the cranial folds match up with the heady good-on-ya rush of excercise-induced endorphins. I sit up and clap as he goes by.
So much for my zen detachment.
About a minute later, as I’m up in the series of turns, a vehicle approaches reasonably quickly from behind. I got a bad feeling well before he starts in yelling at me through the now-opened passenger window. Of course, I wasn’t quite clever enough to have pulled out the pencam in advance of this event, and now I’m reluctant to take hands off the bars. Manage to ignore him for a few sputtering curses and then finally point out that he was the one who was cutting the corners, not me. As you might have guessed, that worked about as well as you would’ve thought. He starts telling me how he wasn’t near me, that I should mind my own business, etc. Then he starts calling me a “busy-body”.
I find this relatively humorous. I’m blinking and reasonably incredulously pondering this oath, as I don’t believe I’ve ever been called a “busy-body” in anger before. Providing proof that humans can parallel process, I’m also yelling back at him.
By this point, he’s been driving in the oncoming traffic lane for some time, on the fairly twisty curves of the road. This can only end badly, and I start repeating that he’s on a blind curve. Loudly. Punctuated a couple times with less-than-polite euphamisms for mental inabilities. At some point, it dawns on him that I’m describing where we are rather than where he was (so maybe the zen sense of presence has not completely atrophied), and he drops back and turns into a picnic area to turn around and leave me alone.
For most of the ride home, I wonder about him and about myself. Whatever combination of job-hate, family and/or world frustration makes him go out and burn up the roadways so he can feel good and in power is not a good thing. But, neither is mocking him. Thank goodness he didn’t have the lack of control to give me a little nudge as we were rounding the corners together later on. I had positioned myself a ways in from the edge, with its little 20 foot drop down to the beach, but at that point, it was damage control rather than intentional actions.
Again, I’ve proven two guiding principles from the farm:
“Don’t try to teach a pig to sing. Wastes time and annoys the pig.”
and
“Never argue with a fool. Folks may not be able to tell the difference.”
Man, I really didn’t want to write about something like this today. Should’ve paid better attention when I read JimG’s “Two Wrongs…” post.
Be good. Be smart.