Skip to main content

No shit, Sherlock.

The man's name was Scott Alan McDowell. He offered a choice between a handful of change or two cigarettes. I gave him two more cigarettes instead. He told me not to forget him, so I won't. I mean, how easily can you forget a reasonably crazy dude you talk to on the street for, like, an hour? He said a lot of bizarre things, and maybe all he wanted was to buy another drink, but there was something else that drove him to where he was. "My brother graduated when he was 19," he said. "And I wasn't there to see it." He seemed genuinely upset by the statement. "Where were you?" I asked. He looked at me sideways.

"I wasn't there."

The lesson I ended up taking away from the experience is that we just don't appreciate what we have. Even when it's gone. Scott Alan McDowell from Maryland seemed to have made a few mistakes that lost him things that were dear to him and never fixed them. Maybe that's a dramatic interpretation, but he gave me a feeling of remorse which made me think about everything I'm lucky enough to have. I mean, this guy said LSD doesn't actually do anything.

I don't really know the words to put the emotions into coherent thoughts. It's just one of those things that makes you think about stuff.

Comments

Carolynn said…
So when are we going to the Bahamas?

As I said yesterday, I was really humbled by how calm you were about the whole thing. I'm not a big fan of strangers, particularly homeless ones, but you kept such a cool head about it, even when he had you gripped in an embrace. Way to go, bro. Really.
January 24, 2010 at 9:08 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Side effects include constant irritability, being an ass.

It was a typical day in MUS 307 . A typical day where nobody pays attention to anything the professor talks about. A day where people play shitty flash games instead of take notes. A day where people sit and refresh their Facebook newsfeed instead of follow the slides. A day where people roll their eyes and go to sleep instead of listen to the music examples. A day where people get up and leave ten minutes before lecture ends instead of having the God damn decency to stay the whole time and pretend to be interested. I mean, if you're going to be so unaffected by the music we're studying in class then why the fuck did you take the class in the first place? Fuck it makes me mad. And I haven't even started talking about that fucker who sits in the back and tries to whistle along with every song that gets played in class. Alright, dude, we get it: you are just too cool and you know everything about jazz, ever. You know every standard ever written and everybody's so...
4 comments
Read more

So, I mean, there's that.

So I went to church again. I slept through most of it but I woke up to hear this: "Oh Lord you are holy indeed. You are a fountain of holiness." Dang, I thought. That is pretty holy. I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas again recently. That is still one of my favorite movies. I never get tired of watching it for some reason. I remember the first time I saw it quite clearly. I was about 5 years old at the time, I think. My dad and I were in the Albertson's video store looking for something to watch as was our Friday night custom. I walked through the aisle, glossing over the scary movies as quickly as I could without looking like I was scared. My dad pulled me aside with a video in hand. "What do you think about this one?" He held up a cover with a skeleton on the cover and 'nightmare' in the title. "It doesn't look very good." I said nonchalantly. "It looks lame." I rolled my eyes and turned away, playing it cool....
Post a Comment
Read more

Pseudo-science (like psych).

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...
5 comments
Read more