Just shy of noon, I stopped to make a right turn as I left work. It rained lightly and the clouds were darkly ominous. It’s the kind of ambience that makes green turn almost neon on the trees. Luckily no one was behind me. I watched a little girl of about 7 years of age, her pigtails flying under her helmet, as she pedaled furiously to make the hill. Twenty feet behind her were two more children on their respective little bicycles. Mom sprinted to catch up with them. They all laughed with absolute glee as mom pushed them both as she ran. A few feet behind her, the dad was smiling as he ran while pushing a stroller. It was a caravan of both exercise and happiness. All of them were smiling and laughing. An unexpected sight for a rainy yet beautiful midday Friday. Without an intention to do so, I watched them all climb the hill for several seconds. It was joy and spontaneity incarnate. Driving away, my thoughts turned to all the lessons that the parents were imparting to the children who were enjoying the rainy day. Fitness, spontaneity, family time, and laughter. Memories made.
I’ve had a post about contractors in my draft folder for 2 years. The impetus to finish it wasn’t there because I no longer own a house. But all of us use contractors, exterminators, and various other people to help us with the things we need to be done. Whether we own or rent, we’re all going to have strangers in our house, deliver to our door, or have access.
Even though bad things happen, they’re rare because most people are good. Even if they aren’t, fear of consequences keeps most of them in line. I’m no alarmist, but all of us who watch or read the news see a barrage of crazy stories where people misbehave. Frankly speaking, many of these encounters can be minimized or avoided if people are both aware and prepare.
I joke a lot about people making the mistake of saying things like, “…but what are the odds of that happening?” The odds of course aren’t high, but they are definitely non-zero. People who’ve had planes crash on them get the last word regarding what is “likely” to happen.
If you think about all the people you’ve known and stories you’ve heard, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all been on the perimeter of misbehavior. All of us have felt the shock of hearing or seeing someone we know do something bad. That effect is multiplied countlessly outside of our own lives.
One thing that everyone should do is at a minimum have a camera on their front door if they can afford it. Or one capturing anyone coming into their residence. Cameras of course tend to dissuade misbehavior. But not always.
You can’t research the people coming to your house or inside it. This gig economy gives a wider swath of different people the ability to move about. Whether it’s Uber, Amazon delivery, or any service.
Just remember that it’s your home and your private safe place. Don’t open the door if you don’t need to. And remember that anybody that comes inside your residence could be anybody, good or bad. Making the mistake of judging them based on their appearance potentially can be a mistake. It doesn’t matter if they are a police officer, lawyer, or welder. People misbehaving come in all shapes and clothing. Studies prove that just seeing someone around greatly reduces your sense of danger or insecurity. The familiar by its nature disarms us. For those few people with ill intentions, most of them have crafted and perfected their words, appearance, and behavior.
Recently, I got reminded of this because of someone inside my bubble. The person turned out to be what my instincts told me he might be. I still have the lingering feeling that his presence on this planet affected a lot of people. And even though I should not say so, things might have happened had the universe not intervened.
I don’t want people to be scared as they live their lives. That’s no way to live.
I wade directly into the middle of strangers, sometimes even when I know there is a risk. But I make that choice for myself. Letting someone into my home is another thing entirely. My ex next door neighbor was a drug dealer. Drugs don’t make me nervous because a surprising number of people use them without ever behaving inappropriately. But all of us know that peripheral behavior often accompanies those who do. And then the people below me had a visibly suspect cast of characters in and out. Often it’s not the people with obvious characteristics of mischief and mayhem who turn out to be the creeps and monsters. A great number of them have a beautiful smile and show no outward expression of their intentions.
I know a few people whose lives were almost ruined by people with wide smiles and dark hearts.
Just be careful. Especially regarding where you live.
PS The picture has nothing to do with the post. Yesterday afternoon I sat in my office chair as a hundred rainbows washed over me from the prisms hanging on the landing.
I’m a big fan of Facebook because I use it for humor and personal stories. I never share memes or do inane things that people tire of.
But I was very surprised when they blocked the post in the picture. It’s a harmless joke. And decently funny.
Each day I open the app to see some pretty outrageous content. From violence, drugs, and adult content.
It’s no wonder their numbers are declining. It will be a loss because the platform has so much potential. But seeing this kind of content being blocked by an algorithm makes their decline inevitable.
I skipped lunch today and left work. The second part of this post notwithstanding, I went to McDonald’s for french fries, often confused as barbituates due to the deliciousness of the salt and grease which coat them. As I pulled up to the pay window, a very young woman greeted me. Before I could utter a word, she said, “Oh, your earring AND glasses match your car. It’s a beautiful color!” Without pausing, I replied, “I pick a car to match each day’s earring choice.” She laughed and said, “That makes perfect sense.” I went to the park adjacent to it and watched the huge crows scampering about and cawcawing mindlessly. It reminded me of an impromptu management meeting because all the crows were squawking simultaneously. The weather was perfect for sitting in the car and munching. Oddly, NPR was playing a segment about eating disorders. When I finished, I walked back over to McDonald’s and bought a basket of fries. These weren’t for me; the murder of crows would be the recipient. I climbed on the rocks and began to toss the fries strategically near the black, winged harbingers. The birds joyously amplified their cawcawing and screeches as they began to snatch the fallen fries from the ground. Shockingly, none of them asked for a condiment packet of ketchup to accompany their snack. A woman in a nearby car watched and smiled. As I finished, she rolled down her window and motioned for me to approach her car. She handed me a bit of bun from her burger and the remaining fries from her lunch. “Let’s try something different,” I told her. I walked a few feet away from her car and piled her remnants in a small stack and walked back to my car. The five or six crows lunged over to the pile and began pecking madly and in unison at the food on the ground. It was another round of joyous cackling and squawks as they noisily devoured the unexpected second course. The woman in her car gave me the thumbs up for giving her a closer look at the crows as they dined on America’s favorite fast food.
I got teased this morning for playing my 70-minute Rocky montage. And that tickles me. Because I got up at 1:00 a.m. and decided I would do 5 minutes of push-ups every hour. I’ll leave you to speculate how many that’s turned out to be so far. This is a one-off day because I made a promise a long time ago not to overdo it. Playing Rocky music evokes muscle memory from when I was younger. I won’t always be able to do this. And I don’t expect to. But for today, it’s a nice reminder that I can. When you don’t do the things you can, It remains remarkably easy not to do them. And for the people rolling their eyes and thinking that I’m humble bragging, that’s okay too. Push-ups have evolved into an amazing anti-anxiety remedy for me. If my arms get too sore, it’s not like I’m going to need to reach up and brush my hair. It treasonously jumped ship decades ago. I don’t miss it.
If you’ve got kids, you already know how loud a murder of crows can be. And if you have a job, you’ll probably identify with the cacophony of overlapping voices allegedly communicating at high volume. The flavor of fries still coats my mouth as I write this. It was a dumb little excursion for me after work but oddly satisfying.
A recent viral video of a local arrest demonstrates what I’ve said a million times: people are going to react to whatever they think happened. I’ve been in the middle of some highly questionable police activity. Having known several police officers, I had the luxury of hearing some of the craziness that goes on behind bureaucracy and authority. This case is much more complicated than people seem to care about. Everyone loves jumping in with opinions, even though context and background are vital to understanding what’s going on. But, of course, people aren’t going to take the time to withhold judgment until they understand the subtleties at play. This is true about personal goings-on and doubly true for things happening in the world around them. Generally speaking, the public as a whole is wildly misinformed, and little can change that. During my normal days, I dart around and listen to people give opinions that reflect a huge disparity in their grasp of detail, whether it’s science, economics, or politics. It’s a reflection of strawman arguments. I listen as people with no expertise or knowledge in a particular field make sweeping statements far beyond their level of understanding.
As for the recent viral story involving the police, I took a bit of time and looked closely at the context. I was not surprised to see that people were dubiously questioning what happened. Most of them were doing so from a position of ignorance. The sound bite version had infected them with the mistaken idea that they understand what happened. Beyond that? They are not interested to know. That’s just human nature. We have more information than ever at our disposal, but our nature is one of superficial comprehension.
And so, they react to their misinterpretation, much like they did years ago when the woman burned herself badly with the cup of McDonald’s coffee. I mention that example because, to this day, people still talk from ignorance about her allegedly ridiculous lawsuit. History proved that her story was complex and that MdDonald’s had been negligent on multiple counts. But that’s not what people remember because the initial media frenzy crowded out the facts and context.
All of us were confused back in the day when the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. It took years for history to come forth with a much more telling recount of the misconduct of Bill Clinton. His pattern of sexually inappropriate conduct as a government employee turned out to be as wild as we imagined. But most of us were crowded into camps of defensiveness or accusation. The facts did little to change our initial point of view. Out of ignorance, I thought it was a case of political witchery. Of course, it turned out to be the case that Bill Clinton consistently behaved inappropriately in his positions of power. Several women were left with the consequences of dealing with the fallout.
A few years ago, most watched as the Duggar mess unfolded. Power and politics wrecked the possibility of a cut-and-dry outcome. What was uncovered in the long term unquestionably put to rest the idea that there was no fire behind the smoke.
There is police misconduct everywhere. That’s going to be the case because people find ways to misbehave regardless of their occupation. In the viral case over the last few days, people acted in good faith and in accordance with policies put in place to protect juveniles. It’s unfortunate to see the public go haywire with a misinterpretation. That’s the power of video in a nutshell. A strawman interpretation of what motivated the police to arrest someone infecting the public and few took the time to look into the ‘why’ of it all.
Time will reveal the details and subtleties. But most people won’t remember those. They’ll keep their inconsistencies in their head to mostly justify whatever conclusion or prejudice they have against the police or people in general.
As for the particular incident that prompted this post? I’m glad that we have school resource officers. Had they existed when I was in school, both of my parents would have been incarcerated multiple times, and I certainly would not have been allowed to live with them. That’s the plain truth. If the initial statements made by the person who put the chain of events in motion were not true, that’s a buttress to my argument about the power of words and accusation. Be cautious in your allegations; they can ruin people. And if they were true? It is a reflection of what goes on behind closed doors at so many homes all across the country. I’m making no hard stand regarding the ‘truth’ of the allegations precisely because we might never know in a meaningful way. Do I feel like people in authority behaved in good faith? Hell yes. And that’s weird for a liberal like me to say. There are countless examples of police misconduct everywhere. I don’t see it in this case.
I made the mistake of diving into the people involved. By way of confession, the booking photo of the person in question made me cringe. I’m as guilty as anyone for jumping to conclusions and more so in this case. I trust my instincts, though they are sometimes wrong.
I’d just like everyone to remember that we don’t really KNOW. And especially when we don’t have access to all the information. It would be nice if we lived in a society wherein laws and protection were applied equally to everyone. It’s obvious that we don’t live in that world. If people are involved, whether it’s the police or private citizens, it’s always going to be messy and full of unseen agendas, resources, and conflict. That’s part of who we are.
I will call this one the flyover of impossibilities. As I walked out to my little blue car, a helicopter passed over, its helices thrumming the air. I’m not morbid but I am unusually aware that such things fall from the sky. It’s been 30 years since the plane crash. But there’s hardly a day that passes that I don’t hear someone comment something along the lines of, “But how likely is that?” I’m sure a strange look across as my face sometimes when this happens. On a long enough timeline, everything is possible. I’ve actually become proud of that horrible day in the early ’90s. I received an unwelcome message, one that I learned over and over in childhood… periodically I get pissed off at myself because the lesson slips my mind. And it fascinates me that people think I’m a certain way capriciously. It’s such a part of my inherent nature that I forget that they couldn’t understand. I might live to be 90. But I’ve come to embrace something in me that is probably a defect. As people fret and futurize, there are times when the futility of doing so seems so damn obvious to me. It causes self-reflection and makes me wonder if all of that is true, why do I catch myself overthinking and concerned about the what-ifs? Love, X +
Sitting in the creek with my feet in the water is awesome. Daydreaming long enough to realize that a juvenile cottonmouth or copperhead is a foot away isn’t as pleasant. I stood up slowly to take a picture but it slithered away like a manager with an overextended budget. I’m not as afraid of snakes as I probably should be. I usually patiently tell them that if they try to bite me, I’m going to catch their cousins and make a soup out of them. It seems to be a viable agreement.
It hasn’t been that many years ago, though it seems it, that I had to do taxes. I didn’t mind doing them, but that year was a nightmare. I had to submit 28 casino declarations as a result of jackpots. Not mine. It took hours just for that portion. I didn’t mind going to the casino. Travel a bit, and gamble for a bit. Casinos can be a lot of fun. I was a terrible gambler, and though I would sometimes risk more if the slot asked for more money than I made in an hour after taxes, that stuck in my head. But I’d go for walks or sit and read while my partner passed hours seated in the casino. She won quite often, no doubt about it. You don’t get 28+ jackpots in a year without spending a LOT of hours in casinos. Again, I enjoyed casinos to a degree. But I did get frustrated when she’d blame me for not engaging in activities that weren’t casino-related. How can you have time for other things when casinos ate up most of your free time? Work consumed the rest. I was happy writing, doing picture projects, walking, and just spending time wherever I was. The other thing was the secrecy about going to the casino. I had no problem saying where I was going. But when you’re gambling that much, on a long enough timeline, everyone knows you’re not winning, no matter how many jackpots say otherwise. My partner didn’t want everyone to know where she was or how often she went. Whether it was her close family or the religious owners of the company she worked for. I get it. But that secrecy crept into conversations. I haven’t been back to the casino since. Now that it’s all in the past, I wonder what might have happened had we spent even half of that time on bicycles, walking, or visiting places or would-be friends instead of inside the noise-filled casinos we traveled to. It’s a moot question. But it’s one of the many reasons I say everything is much more complex than people are told. It usually is. People are told stories, or they hear things, thinking they know all the variables and understand the linear conclusion we came to. They don’t. Because they don’t know. I was perplexed by the contradictory attitude of letting work consume you only to pour that money into an activity that provided temporary entertainment. Let a job rob you of energy and free time and give it to that kind of entertainment? I would have rather spent time out walking and doing other things without the money. And I tried. But you go along for a complex series of reasons that seem different once you’re away from it. I caught hell for the way I was about watching TV. Like any other activity, I’m attentive. I hate watching things while scrolling on a phone or puttering around the house. That’s what HGTV is for; background noise. If watching TV is a mutually enjoyed activity, part of the allure of it is watching it together; otherwise, you’re just occupying space and burning time away. I shake my head that my tv-watching was turned into an accusation of controlling behavior. I’m that way with reading, writing, or anything I’m engaged in. The reason I mention it is that I never strongly made the same point about casinos: they literally ate up a huge portion of our free time and money. And I would have loved to be doing other things most of the time. Was I being controlled because I was spending my life doing something that I enjoyed to a degree but would have rather been enjoying life some other way? That’s the kind of connection people miss. And they definitely weren’t told. And all of it had an impact on how we ended up.
Fate in the creek redux. It sounds like an elitist country music song. The mossy stones in the bed of the creek are slipperier than the nostrils of a 7-year-old in January. But the birds are chirping, bicycles and pedestrians are passing by above and beyond the rise that borders the creek. The sunlight is casting deep and mercurial shadows across the shimmering water. While it might not equal the smell of frying bacon on a random Saturday of my youth with my grandparents, It beats the hell out of working. I’ve always loved this but I must be getting older. I’ll know for sure when you hear me say that I have a favorite spatula. The only way it could feel any better is if somebody were carefully traversing the bed of the creek to hand me a slice of pepperoni pizza or a large french fry. Summer is definitely coming. But it’s not here today. Just a cool breeze and enough sunlight penetrating the canopy of the trees… X
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 