Walking into Health/Walking into a Storm

Every day for several weeks I have been walking into work.  My ritual as it has now become is part of the “make the best of these later years” campaign.  As part of the campaign each week on Sunday mornings I go to Weight Watchers.  More often than not I am losing weight.  As of last week it was twenty five pounds down.  Some strategies do have positive results.  In reality once the first 10 days passed I was not missing my daily candy bar or M&Ms.

Routing for my walk is simple.  Each day I take the neighborhood streets insofar as I can.  I grab photographs of the flowers that are starting to come into season.  I take a daily picture of a construction site; the time lapsed movie of it is rather fun.  I turn on my iPhone and set it upside down in my shirt pocket and listen to tunes.  Headphones are out due to hearing loss from one too many rock and roll concerts.  My eyes scan for the odd and the unusual.  Today I notice somebody is using the wrought iron head and footboards of a twin bed as trellises for Morning Glories; odd but kind of cute.

There is only about a five block stretch I have to walk on a main thoroughfare.  If I have remembered to bring a plastic bag I pick up empty water, energy drink and juice containers.  With no deposit required on these there sure are a great number of them abandoned along the way. 

About a block from my office I started into a cross walk.  There was a car coming down Highland and it was an old beige Buick.  It was at least four car lengths from the stop.  I started across.  The driving despite having plenty of time to slow and stop made it a point of screeching to a stop.  His driver side window was down.  He called me a mother*cker and then began a bit of a tirade.  I looked to see if it was someone I knew and if this rant was just a social greeting.  Neither of these potential facts were the actual case.

As I finished crossing the street the vehicle the vehicle accelerated and the driver threw out one more epithet calling me a piece of poo.  He actually rolled down the passenger side window to do this.  Well, I raised my middle finger in salute to such exemplary behavior.  I also lost my cool and referred to him as a human fluid receptacle.  He sped away, but I felt guilty.

This man made me lose my cool.  I reacted in anger and not compassion.  I don’t know what his urgency was, and whether there was any urgency at all. There were no cars on either street to speak of. Maybe he knew me and didn’t like me before he got to the stop. My incursion into his path may have allowed him to vent things he thought about me before he ever saw me today. Whatever the genesis, my response was wrong.  I am therefore apologizing to you my readers because he is long gone down the highway.  In life things will go sideways through no fault of our own.  Our compassion and understanding will usually be the best course.  So it goes.