I should have written this morning, late is better than nothing but need brooks no delay? Can anyone identify where that quote is from? Part of how my brain works is that I have trouble remembering many things but others the path to some memories are so well-worn that I can access them instantly. I suspect everyone is like that to some degree, but people often comment at things I remember, so I take it that the way my memory works is unusual. That’s a nice intro to today’s blog as I’m going to talk about another way I’m not built like most people.
Unless you are living under a rock you heard about the shooting in Brooklyn Tuesday morning. It is still a big part of the news reports. Tuesday my Facebook feed was filled with people checking in safe or asking their friends in Brooklyn to do so. I was not worried about my friends, not because I don’t care about them but because there are 2.6 million people in Brooklyn what are the odds that someone I know was on of the ten that were hurt? It’s more than that, it has to be one of the ten that was hurt so badly hurt that they couldn’t post on social media. I am not criticizing anyone. I realize worrying is the normal human reaction. This is an eccentricity of mine. We all have them. Moving on, while reading yesterdays and today’s paper there were frequent mentions of people being wary of going on the subway until the shooter, Frank James, was caught. I took the subway that evening while he was still at large, and it didn’t occur to me to worry about it. With all my ridiculous anxiety about minor things, something that big doesn’t trigger it. I’m totally irrational about some things but not this. If anything, my gut leans to being too bold.
The entire world has been afraid of COVID-19. I was never worried about myself. If I’m caught without a mask I don’t panic. Fortunately, this is something where my rational mind can override my gut, so I am careful. I am not afraid of being maskless, but I am only mask-free because I made a mistake. It’s not a conscious decision on my part. The only that keeps me careful is worrying about other people’s health. I can take chances with my own but not others. This is not me being virtuous or selfless, this is me playing mind games with myself, so I do the right thing.
Is everyone aware of the ways they aren’t built like most people or is that another way that I’m not built like most people. I know I’m not the only one. I see it in people every day. I had a friend that honestly felt that everyone made moral judgments based on what was good for them. He thought that if other people are accused, they are guilty until proven innocent, but he got upset when he was accused of doing something that he did if they couldn’t prove it beyond not a reasonable, but a shadow of a doubt. When I pointed out he was inconsistent he said, “Everyone is like that.” Then there are little things that aren’t good or bad simply different. There’s one person I know who will use just a first name to identify celebrities, or sometimes even just a pronoun, and he expects people to know who he means. He might say, “Paul has a new album coming out” and expect people to know that he means McCartney or Simon or Ellis. Sometimes it’s just, “He’s on the SNL tonight.” I notice it all the time as half the time I have no idea who he means. I don’t know if this grates on other people like it does me as I don’t complain as unless he’s talking directly to me it doesn’t hurt me. I have a low tolerance for certain things that I shouldn’t. Give me a cookie as I just ignored a post on one of my baseball groups in which he “proved” that RBIs are not opportunity dependent by saying; “look at Yogi Berra.” Rational me knows that I can’t have a rational discussion with him but curmudgeon me is screaming at me to say something. I shouldn’t listen to curmudgeon me and I didn’t. I am Zen about mass shootings and pandemics but not stupidity. That’s me in a nutshell; with extra emphasis on the nut.
Wise Madness 