I had moved the mower over a crushed Pepsi can, the blades separating the aluminum into two pieces. I'd seen the can in the grass earlier but felt distracted after finding a dollar bill nearby. Pleased with my luck, I switched focus momentarily to the mutilated can now in two pieces on either side of the mower.
Lawnmowers are loud. My attention for about five seconds was directed at the ground before I heard, "HELLO!"
A sarcastic utterance from the bicyclist. As I pulled the mower back, he passed, adding his judgment of my intelligence. I can't know for sure if he's writing a blog, or making movies as I am, or if he's knowledgeable about the origins of the First Crusade, or if he knows anything about the strange career of Lee Harvey Oswald, or if he's read Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, but I know I'm not an idiot, as in dummy, moron, or one who would have difficulty understanding how to order a chicken sandwich from a drive-through menu at Burger King.
In addition, I knew some real fucking idiots at university, including an English major who picked up a woman in a bar and vomited on her breasts while they had sex.
Earlier, backing out of my driveway to go mow that lawn, my car halted as I momentarily shifted from Reverse to Drive. When I entered the street backwards I saw no cars using the road ahead of me or behind me. A bulky white pickup truck, like a moving tower, must have speeded to my position with suddenness. A long push on his horn seemed unnecessary, although maybe he couldn't wait two or three seconds until I got going.
Coming home, ahead of me, a Chrysler van's driver honked at a slow-moving man in rumpled disheveled clothes crossing the street. By the time the driver honked, the man was already mostly across the street, an unnecessary blast of displeasure helping no one.
I said out loud but to myself, "Doesn't he already have enough problems, fuckface?"
The van's driver moved up to a grand speed of 22 miles per hour in a 25 zone. I drove behind this slow-moving person who had gotten irritated by a slow-moving man, feeling irritated until the Chrysler turned.
Dwelling on these three incidents involving impatience, I've wondered about my own tendency to get pissed at people over the committing of minor acts. It also makes me wonder if I am a fuckin idiot. Maybe I am slow, oblivious to my surroundings? One thing I don't do is honk my horn unless it's necessary--a rarity in ordinary driving in a city with just 70,000 people. Sit for an extra three seconds when the light turns green, it's likely the person behind will honk, alerting one's attention, but that also sends into one's nervous system the hostility of another.
The bicyclist's own idiotic contempt for me failed to take into account the lawnmower's noise and that street's busy traffic roar. He knows lawnmowers are loud. Does he know my hearing isn't what it was when I was his age? Does he know he's a pussy for riding his bike on the sidewalk instead of on the street, like my friends and I did when we were under the age of ten?
All three cases were minor road rage, one road being a sidewalk. If such insignificant inconveniences provoked such displeasure from three citizens of my town in less than an hour, I wonder how we don't think more often and more deeply about boiling energies causing some to lash out, even if just by honking a horn or insulting a stranger.
A friend told me he would never, while driving, give someone the middle finger, meaning "Fuck you!"
Not only is it rude and pointless, "flipping the bird" could be done at someone with a gun in his car. Pressures build in fragmented societies abused and warped by bad leadership. Divide and conquer is those leaders' guiding philosophy. A populace striving against itself constitutes a quiet civil war. We each participate in society, even as loners. Aggravate people with monetary frustrations, no health care, college and medical debt, a war that never ends, political disagreements ruling out friendly dialogue, a species on a collision course with increasingly severe climate change, wealth disparity not seen since the time of Egypt's pharaohs, and the possibility ripens that a society will clash with itself while the ruling class laughs, murders people, and gets richer.
I was in the bicyclist's way? Maybe he was in mine?
The man in the white pickup truck, for a few seconds, didn't get to drive 35 in a 25 zone? Maybe I have the intelligence to not suddenly shift my car into Drive while it's still rolling backwards?
The van's driver was delayed for five seconds while a man I've seen in the Mental Health Services Building ambled at his own speed across the street? Maybe his day's pace is also important?
My mild enmity toward these three aggravated people today reflects my own occasional misanthropy, although I keep it contained as much as my nerves will allow. Timon of Athens, mentioned above, deals with a rich man who gives a lot of money to his ungrateful friends. Disgusted, Timon renounces civilization to live by himself in a cave.
No traffic in a cave, no noisy machines, no slow-moving pedestrians, just dirt and echoes.
Even with today's triad of hot-blooded incidents, I can't give up on society, nor can I help wondering if Timon of Athens lives inside the caverns of our minds, shouting occasionally, pointlessly, his cry from the heart an upraised middle finger at a world not always cooperating with our timetables and our hopes, inspiring instead spent, empty echoes.
Vic Neptune
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