Me, me me...

What is the deal with the 'me first' attitude these days? Not only do people seem to think that the world revolves around them, but that other people are thoughtless and clueless. You can catch a glimpse of this by driving on just about any highway where there is any kind of traffic present. It seems that too many people want to be in front, must get wherever they are going five minutes ago, or must inspect your tailpipe from two inches away.

Problem is, too many old folks feel that this is an attribute primarily of the younger folk. I live in a community where the Centrum Silver crowd outnumber the youth, and have either forgotten what it was like to be young, or have never made it past puberty in their developmental process. We have folks parking on too narrow streets, folks letting their dogs run off-leash, and folks driving like they have a death wish: too fast and driving in the middle of the road around blind corners. I suppose the taking wide turns thing could be to account for the nimrods parked on the street, but driving too fast? Maybe they are perpetually twenty minutes too late....

I am not saying that all of the older folks I know are like this, or that the elderly are the only idiots in my neighborhood, but you have to figure that when they outnumber the young here like they do.... Well, something isn't right with blaming it all on the 'not quite over the hill' crowd

Anyway, I know this guy whom I visit with almost every weekend. I suppose you could call him a friend. He is elderly, and, well, he seems lonely, so I like to walk to the park to give him someone to talk to. He sometimes has interesting stuff to say. Other times he talks about 2012 and the Mayan 'end of the world' prophecy. I think it might be because he is in his mid seventies and believes the end of his life should mean the end of the world. He says he talks about it to warn me, but what the hell? If we are all going to die on that day, does it much matter? When I bring up that argument, he tells me that all the plankton might be killed that day, and we all might slowly suffocate, or that we will pass through a radiation burst from the sun and we will all slowly die from radiation poisoning. Cheery guy, eh? Even when I point out that essentially means I don't have to lose anybody, since we all are dying at roughly the same time, he counters with another horrible scenario. (By the way, I think he also voted for McCain, as he always had something negative to say about Obama. Not that I hold that against him -- the voting for McCain bit, as I was considering it for a while in the primaries, myself -- but it does say something.)

So, now that I have given a small introduction, I want to give an example of someone not thinking that other people are capable of, well, anything, apparently. It was in the springtime, I think, but who can tell in southern Nevada? I can't remember what we we talking about, but somehow we got on the subject of fighting and he tells me that he could kill me before I knew what was coming. I found it hard not to laugh, as this guy was sitting in his car, and, as I said before, is quite old. I wanted to ask if he was planning to do that before or after I made his kneecaps and elbows bend the wrong way, but I refrained. See, I enjoy walking my dogs to the park, and every now and then I get useful information from this him. Also, I kind of like the guy, and I suppose that if he wants to believe that he could kill me, I should let him. However, now that he has said that, I don't believe that I will be disregarding any hostile movements from him.