Why

I'm going to try to show off my world, or the world from my point of view, by posting a picture a day for a whole year. I'm not sure if this will be a success, but I have to give it a try.

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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Day 191


This doesn't have anything to do with the picture, but it did happen today.

On the way home from the gym a garbage truck decided to block one lane of traffic. You had to drive round it, meaning you were driving on the wrong side of the road. Not a huge deal, so about 8 to 10 cars and I all bunched together go around it. No problem. That is until the car in front of me goes around. 

A soccer mom in her over-sized SUV, and who was not there when we all started out, decided that the first 8 people in this stream were fine getting through, but myself and the car in front of me needed to be taught a lesson. Not only did she try to hit both of us, but we get flipped off as well. 

After that pleasant exchange, we keep going down the road. It widens out into 4 lanes, 2 on each side. For some reason, 2 delivery trucks, one on each side of the street, decide that the start of rush hour is the best time to deliver packages. So 2 lanes of traffic are now also blocked off. I decide I don't need this aggravation and went a different way home. All is fine.

That is until I get to the apartment complex. A guy walking two of his dogs thinks he should be able to walk out in front of me. I don't really mind because I'm nearly home. Still a fair distance away I just stop and wait. But the guy also stops. I'm looking at him, he's staring at me. We just sit there for a good 10-15 seconds. Then he starts playing with his dogs. I think at this point my head was about to explode. "What are you doing?! Why are you doing this?! What the hell is wrong with you?!" All these things flying around in my head. I decide, to hell with it, I'm driving off.

As I get closer and closer, he stops playing with the dogs and just looks at me. His facial expression is really hard to explain in words. It was a mixture of confusion, dishevelment, sadness, and disbelieving. It's as if he thought I was going to let him play with his dogs in the middle of the road/parking lot. I keep on going by, just staring back at him, feeling like a parent or teacher who just saw a child trying to stick their finger in a pencil sharpener. You're disappointed that they don't have enough common sense to know what to do in these situations. And because you have no idea what they're doing or why they're doing it, you've been brought down to their level of incompetence.

And that was the most infuriating thing about this whole event.
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One last thing. 30 years ago, Mark David Chapman read too much into the overrated novel "The Catcher in the Rye" and subsequently took a great musician, songwriter, and activist from this world. John Lennon would have been 70 years old.

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