The World We Live In

This isn’t the blog I was thinking of posting this week. I’ve been putting my thoughts together on my theories about alien visitation and I’ll get around to writing that at some point. But something happened this week that I need to report, because I may have dodged a bullet. Literally.

This happened at the cable TV office. I stopped in to pay my cable bill. I think I may have mentioned this in a blog a couple of years ago as one of the Things That Cheese Me Off. In a perfect world I’d hand over my check and be in and out in less than a minute. What usually happens is there’s one other customer in there, and they’ve got some kind of problem that takes forever to resolve. (This happens in bank lines a lot, too. I dare you to tell me it doesn’t.) I’m left standing there for five to ten minutes or longer for a thirty-second transaction. Yeah, it cheeses me off.

To make matters worse, I usually see the person who winds up holding up the line go in ahead of me, usually just by seconds. Which is what happened. I almost ran the woman down in the parking lot because she wasn’t paying attention. While I parked, she went inside. I knew what was going to happen before I even got in there.

I was partially right. They’d remodeled the office over the summer. Now you walk right in and they’ve got two service windows. Sadly, both were busy with people who had problems. The lady who’d gone in ahead of me was at the head of the line. I stepped up behind her.

During remodeling, the Payment window had put up a box labeled “Put payments here if you don’t need a receipt.” That box saved me a lot of waiting on more than one occasion. Pity I didn’t see it out in the new office. There’s supposed to be a drive-up window, but they’d parked a truck there, blocking it. Guess the window’s closed.

Well, I was there. Might as well wait.

Over the next five-ten minutes about four other people came in. One of the customers wrapped up her business and the woman in front of me took her place. Sure enough, she had a problem too. (The guy at the other window was there before, during and after my visit. He may still be there now, for all I know.) “How long have you been here?” the guy behind me asked me at one point. “About five minutes,” I replied.

We resumed our waiting. Two people behind me struck up a conversation. The woman who’d beaten me into the office got one question settled but then asked another one. “These people are so old they’re liable to die if they’re here much longer,” the guy behind me said (or words to that effect). I thought about giving a smartass response but didn’t bother. I just shrugged.

“C’mon, hurry up,” the guy starts growling. “Quit socializing. Wrap it up!” He’s not talking to me, or to himself. He’s getting quite belligerent, and he’s getting louder.

Fortunately the woman did wrap up her business and left. I went to the window, handed over my check and payment slip, suggested they put the box back out for people like me who just want to pay their bill, and left. I smiled and nodded at the guy behind me on my way out. Your turn, pal. Knock yourself out.

I kept an eye out while I got into the car and as I was pulling away. He didn’t come out. Guess he had a problem too. Sounds like he had several.

It didn’t occur to me until I was out of there and well down the road that he might have been armed.

# # #

We live in a strange and dangerous world today. A lot of people seem to be on edge, for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all. I’ve had people go off on me for reasons I can’t determine. I’ve done the same to others. In one case I was overheated (it was summer and humid); in another I hadn’t had sufficient sleep for a couple days. The people I snapped at wouldn’t have known that, though. Want some celebrity examples? Check YouTube. You should be able to find the video of singer Bjork attacking a woman in an airport, because the woman had called out, “Welcome to England” (or whatever the country was) to her. Or Tyra Banks having a Chernobyl-level meltdown and reaming out a contestant on America’s Next Top Model. Somebody says or does something—or nothing—that just hits these people the wrong way at the wrong time and they snap.

Sometimes it’s just loud and harmless. And sometimes it isn’t. More and more these incidents happen while somebody’s holding a gun. And there’s no telling who, when, or where.

The guy behind me didn’t look like a nutjob. He didn’t fit any of the usual profiles. He was a white guy, tall, maybe in his 50s, either retired, off work, or out of work. How else could he be in a cable TV office on an early Monday afternoon? I don’t know why he was there. Maybe to pay his bill, like me. Maybe he lost access to ESPN. Maybe he had to be somewhere else and was pissed at the thought he might be late.

All I know for sure was that he was working himself up into a nice little tantrum. Getting to the service window probably defused him. Or not. Some people need the explosion. He could have been looking for an excuse to go off on somebody. Relieve whatever stresses were building up in his head. We can’t tell how people’s brains are wired, or miswired, just by looking.

Or maybe he was just an entitled, impatient a-hole with the emotional control of a spoiled-brat five-year-old. In which case, get over yourself. I was ticked at the long wait too, and I’ll bet so were the others in line. You didn’t see any of us getting obnoxious over it.

I haven’t heard any reports of violence at the cable TV office, so he probably just reamed out the customer service girl, stomped out the door and went home. This time. Next time it could be different. He could have a knife or a gun on him when something pushes him, or someone like him, that last inch over the edge.

The Vegas shooter didn’t fit any profiles either. He was white, older, rich. No criminal record. Nothing at all to suggest he’d smuggle a bunch of firearms into a hotel suite and open fire on concertgoers below. His own family was stunned by his actions. He suicided before the cops could get him, so we’ll never know what sent him over the brink.

Anyone. Anywhere. Any time.

I need to start paying more attention to the people around me. Just in case I have to hit the floor and roll under a desk or something. Maybe I should start mailing in my cable bill. It’s probably safer. And faster.

How Times Have Changed

Yeah, I’m getting old. One of the telltale signs is when you start dwelling on the past. The other day, for no real reason, I got thinking about something that happened in grade school, and how reactions were far different then than they would be now.

This didn’t happen to me. It happened to some kid whose name I don’t remember. I don’t think I even knew him personally. He was one of those “other” kids you pass in the halls at school, or who sits in class with you, but isn’t part of your immediate friend-or-acquaintance circle. He might even have been in a grade above or behind me. This was in New Jersey, back in the ‘60s—the Precambrian Era, to you folks today.

Short version: some adult in the neighborhood had a cement statue on their lawn of a Mexican dude with a burro. The burro was just big enough that a little kid could sit on it. This kid did. The statue fell over and the kid hurt his leg. I think he may have gone to the hospital.

The overall consensus, among grown-ups and his peers alike, was, “What a stupid kid.” If the statue was damaged, I’ll bet his parents had to pay for it. I’ll also bet he got an ass-whuppin’ when they got home from the doctor’s. I don’t know what happened to the kid because we moved to Pennsylvania when I was eight, but something tells me he never trespassed in anyone’s yard again, or sat on any statues. Unless he went to college and got drunk at a frat party, but that’s extenuating circumstances.

That was the 1960s. How different that story would be if it were told today.

For starters, it wouldn’t be a statue of a Mexican and he wouldn’t have a burro to sit on, because those are hurtful racial stereotypes. Luckily for stupid kids everywhere, there’s still plenty of yard art around, dogs and horses and deer, things like that, that are big enough and look sturdy enough for some kid to want to climb aboard. And they fall over just as easily as they did fifty years ago.

The response today, though, is way different. The kid would be rushed to the hospital, and the parents would rush to a lawyer, to sue the homeowner for having that statue on his lawn to tempt their precious child into hurting himself in the first place. Then Child Protective Services would come after the parents for allowing that kid to wander the streets alone and unsupervised, where any pervert could snatch him. I’m not sure what lesson the kid himself would take away from all this. Don’t fall over?

Y’see, somewhere between 1960 and now, society (or maybe some personal injury lawyer) came up with the concept of the “attractive nuisance.” This is something you’ve got in your yard—a pool, a trampoline, a statue of Juan Valdez—that’s just so overwhelmingly tempting to a child that they’ll ignore any and all lessons they’ve been taught about respect for others and rush into your yard and play on it, and probably either damage your property or hurt themselves in the process. Or both.

And guess what? If the kid gets hurt, they’re not responsible. You are. The law assumes that children (and this extends to older kids) are impulsive, have no concept of the possible consequences of their own actions, have no respect for others’ rights (this includes adults) and are really, really dumb. If you park your Harley in your driveway and some teenager wandering by sees it and decides to climb aboard and the bike falls on him, it’s your fault. You should have known better than to park your own cycle in your own driveway where some innocent child could see it. If some kid climbs your ten-foot privacy fence in the middle of the night to get into your swimming pool and then drowns, you’re to blame, not him. You know how kids are about pools, especially in the summer. You should have known better, you thoughtless person, you.

Oh, and while you’re at it, don’t leave your keys in your car. If somebody steals your car and runs someone over with it, you as the owner of the car can be charged as an accessory. They wouldn’t have been able to take your car if you hadn’t made it easy for them by leaving the keys in. It’s like you handed them a gun and they used it to shoot somebody. And for God’s sake don’t park it anywhere except inside a locked garage. Otherwise some kid might decide to climb on it, and if he hurts himself you could be going to jail.

A couple of years back, while living elsewhere, I had a front yard with some plants in it. One day I looked out the window and saw some kid, maybe around 10 or so, with a stick pounding my plants into pulp. I went outside and yelled at him. The kid went on pounding. Only when he’d destroyed the plants to his satisfaction did he walk away. Not run, which we would have done back in the ‘60s had a grownup caught us vandalizing their property. This kid just strolled off.

I couldn’t do a damn thing. Had I physically tried to stop him, I could have been charged with assault. Or worse, depending on the kid’s imagination. I didn’t know his parents, and talking to them wouldn’t help anyway. It wasn’t their yard that got trashed, so what’s the problem? They’re not going to replace the plants. I could force an apology out of the kid, but so what? He wouldn’t care. He got what he wanted. He probably wouldn’t even remember attacking the plants, if it happened longer than five minutes ago. It’s already ancient history. I’m the crazy stranger lady who’s harshing his buzz right now. Move on with your life already, you old bitch.

I don’t live in that neighborhood any more. Wonder what, or who, that kid took a stick to when he reached his teens? It’s not as if there’d be any repercussions. He learned that a long time ago. Let’s hope he didn’t find a car with the keys left in it. Or a swimming pool.

Somewhere along the way society as a whole lost its common sense, and any hope of passing any helpful knowledge or wisdom on to the next generation. It’s left us with a nation of emotional infants who feel they have the right to sit on your donkey statue, and will blame you if they fall off and hurt themselves. You probably know them. They voted for Trump.

Ah, progress.