Encounters

I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been

Posted by Eric

Last weekend I was stopped behind several other cars at a traffic light, when the guy behind me in a bright-yellow low-end muscle car lays on his horn. I didn’t think anything of it, except that he ought to learn to relax. The light changes, and we all start to move. Yellow-car-guy races to pull up next to me, and flips me the bird. Huh. I wonder what has his panties in a bunch?

Then he pulls in front of me, and again flips me off, this time through his open sunroof. Still no idea what his malfunction is. But it’s a nice sunny day, and the car he’s driving suggests that he’s compensating for some shortcoming, so I shrug it off.

A mile or so later, I pull into a turning lane and pass yellow-car-guy. As I go by he sticks his shaved head out of his car window and flips me off yet again. And this time he yells "Fucking Communist!"

Aha. Now I get it. I have an Obama 2012 bumper sticker on my car. Like it or dislike it, I think you’ll agree it’s a fairly trivial expression of opinion, all things considered. But clearly, that’s what has muscle-boy so worked up.

I’m not sure what the inbred skinhead racist moron thought he was accomplishing (hey, if he can conclude that I’m a fucking communist on the basis of a bumper sticker, then surely I can reasonably conclude he’s an inbred skinhead racist moron on the basis of his reaction to it). But I do know what he actually accomplished – he put a grin on my face that lasted for the better part of an hour. If by merely having a simple bumper sticker I can make such a cretin so angry that he has to scream obscenities at a complete stranger on the road, well, that makes me very happy.

Dragonfall

Posted by Eric

Not the dragonfly of the story

When I opened the garage door this afternoon, I discovered a dragonfly that had been bumping around in there all night. Despite the open door, he kept smacking into the back wall, and was dangerously close to a spider web. Poor, stupid, softhearted goof that I am, I decided I should help him.

So I stood on the top step leading into the house and gently, oh so gently, cupped my hands around the dragonfly.

By now, anyone familiar with me already knows what is about to happen.

With the dragonfly safely in my cupped hands, I turned to take him out to the flowerbed. Naturally, since I was concentrating so much on not hurting the dragonfly, I completely forgot that I was standing two steps off the nice, firm, concrete garage floor.

Yeah.

To my credit, my hands remained carefully cupped around the dragonfly, who came through the incident entirely injury free. Since I couldn’t use my hands to break my fall, I didn’t. Break my fall, that is. Eight hours later the feeling has mostly returned to my toes, and the badly scraped knee has almost stopped throbbing. By my standards, I came through it remarkably well.

I hope the dragonfly appreciates the assist.

Brittany ‘McKey’ Sullivan

Posted by Eric

I was surfing random web sites and stumbled across a photo of McKey Sullivan, who was the winner of America’s Next Top Model in November, 2008. She looked really familiar to me, so I did some searching through my various photos and found this one I had taken of her at the Bristol Renaissance Faire in August of that year.

Brittany 'McKey' Sullivan

I’ve photographed a famous model! How cool is that?