This is a first world problem and a small frustration. I must crease my torso to be submerged but in return I get to remain a tall person.
I draw the bath to a comically hot temperature but one guaranteed to leech away any ache one may feel.
I was blissfully but all too briefly ensconced in such a soak late last Thursday when my wife barged into the bathroom, demanding that I investigate an ache of her own. It presented itself like a welt or pimple of some kind.
Over a period of days, she monitored the affected area and when sufficiently frightened, did the only responsible thing one can do in such a circumstance - describe your affliction on Facebook and invite the expected, completely uninformed speculation to run wild as to what kind of necrotic spider had sealed her fate. After a day spent scrubbing every surface in our bedroom and looking for the 'hiding' arachnid, she went to a professional that could at least offer informed speculation and a host of antibiotics chock full of diarrhea inducing goodness. It turns out the offender is likely hiding in plain sight - not a flesh eating brown recluse spider but rather a toilet or tanning booth that some carrier had left behind. I registered this knowledge as less than surprising, given my doubt that the salon staff does a bang up job of sanitation.
"As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what's happening in our country" - Steve Jobs
After a hard earned two miles and a half hour later,
I positioned myself in the turn lane, hoping for other motorists to allow me through. The two lanes moving west on Ogden (through Route 59) were twenty-five to thirty cars deep. At 6:45pm. The car in the far lane saw me and waved me in to go through. The near lane was occupied by two youngish people. The passenger, a male, made eye contact with me, immediately turned to the driver and muttered something. They both smirked at me and held eye contact as their car lurched forward into the nine feet of space I required to make a successful left turn. I clear my throat and consider the merits, but do not spit. I do nothing, but often wonder if I'd feel any satisfaction were I to express my discontent in some manner.
While enduring this kind of spite, I always think of my favorite Michael Douglas film. The clip below is from 1993's "Falling Down". I imagine what he'd do, listening to the CVS clerk moan that the customers always line up when her coworker goes on break, while demanding that you provide your phone number in return for paying cash for two candy bars. I imagine him, like me arriving home with an empty stomach and looking forward to the Boston Market he's picked up, only to find that the muttering cashier who took his order thought nothing at all of sending him on his way with sweet corn cooked so long it was devoid of any flavor at all.
The Washington Post writer Hal Hinson observed "This guy is you, the movie suggests, and if not you exactly, then maybe the guy you're one or two bad breaks from becoming. At one time or another, we've all thought these thoughts, and so when this downtrodden, laid-off, teed-off L.A. defense worker gets out of his car on a sweltering day in the middle of rush hour and decides he's not going to take any more, it comes as no surprise",
"
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French Philosopher, 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778
I suppose he was right, but history has been mostly unkind to the peaceful resister. There would be no happy ending for Douglas's character, nor Rousseau and his decidedly less vociferous dissent. For preaching religious and social tolerance, his home was stoned, he was banished from France and prevented from publishing any more written works.
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