I ignore idiots

Well, I try to anyway. I am rarely successful. I find stranger-idiots harder to ignore than idiots-I-know.

The first stranger-idiot that really stuck with me was about 25/30 years ago. It was actually a pair of idiotic moments, juxtaposed idiocy if you will. I was in the medium sized NE town in which I grew up & I was stopped at a light (on Jerome Avenue near Dr. Merkelson's office, if you want specifics). There were two blacks boys (i.e. african-american youths) slouching their way across the street & a little-old-lady going bat-sh*t on the horn of her car. You think you know who the idiot here is but I bet you are wrong: the boys were in a cross-walk & she was trying to make a right run on red. Flash forward, a car full of teenagers honking their brains out at an old man with a walker jay-walking through the same busy intersection. In the second one they are all idiots. Even the passengers on the back seat of the car.

What sticks with me is my conviction that every participant in these little vignettes each left the scene absolutely sure that they were not idiots & the other guy should probably just die. Except for the first two boys; I do not think they had the vaguest idea she was beeping at them. They were so right they could not see that she thought they were wrong.

Even if I did know where the people were & could ask them, I doubt even one of them would remember the moments I remember. I am fairly certain that at least two of them are no longer above ground, but that is the extent of my knowledge. I am equally certain that the unremembered fed their own absolute version of reality.

This brings me to a very recent idiot, also in traffic (yes, I file my idiots: idiots in vehicles, idiots by the side of the road, idiots who think their bicycle helmets will protect their entire body, etc.). She was walking back & forth across University Avenue, in the crosswalk, so I guess that makes it better, having a very involved, emotional conversation with someone on her cell-phone. Oblivious to the traffic around her, she talked & gestured & paced.

I obviously do not ignore idiots; I cannot even forget them. Apparently I archive idiots. I need something else for 'I'. Lets go back to "H'. I will pretend I am Eliza Doolittle & say: h'I h'am 'aunted by h'idiots. No, that is just stoopid.