I think I hate everyone....

... with not too many exceptions.

Well, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. But only slight.

There's my president, who started a needless war for the wrong reasons. There are his advisers, some of whom think it's a fine idea to torture captives. There are Osama and all his medieval ilk, who also think it's just fine to torture anyone they don't like, not to mention that it's their idea of a good time to blow up pretty much anyone who would prefer to live in a world that has progressed since the 15th century. (Or, what the heck, pretty much anyone else too, for that matter. Why be picky?) How about a large number of my students, who I now know agree that it's alright to torture "our enemies." But perhaps they're too young to know better. (And anyway, I shouldn't think that, because I have to be objective in assigning grades, don't I?) And the list goes on, capped by a guy I saw during my last run.

I was at the lake running a loop, and the weather was pretty miserable. Cold, windy and drizzly. Almost no one out there. The least crowded I think I've ever seen it, in fact. Far fewer than either Christmas or New Year's Day. I was on the newish winding section of trail leading to the new bridge on the north end when I saw two people ahead. Both with dogs. One running and one walking. The runner slowed as he went past the walker and looked at him, and then went on. I was perhaps 30 yards behind, so I couldn't hear, and my glasses were blurred by drizzle, so I couldn't see very well, either. When I got to the walker a few seconds later I could see that he was "disabled." Walked very awkwardly with a cane. I slowed so as not to startle him or his dog, and as I went by, said hello. He called to me: "Hello, sir! Could you help me?" By his voice I could tell he did not simply have a bad leg. Some sort of neurological disorder. Anyway, I of course stopped to see what he needed. He repeated: "Could you help me?" and handed me the end of the dog leash. With his cane he then managed to knock a chunk of wood out from the heel of his shoe, which had a big exposed spring into which the wood had gotten lodged. He then was effusive in his thanks, seemingly disproportionately so. He said "You're the greatest! You're only the second person I've seen out here in the last hour." I just said "You're welcome. It was no problem. Stay warm!" And I ran on.

It wasn't until I was about up to the runner that the import of his words struck me. The runner I was about to pass had to have been the other person the walker had seen, if it was true that the walker had seen only two people in the last hour. The runner, it follows, had declined to stop to help the walker. I was going a good bit faster than the runner, and as I was passing him it was dawning on me that this was probably the case. Say something? If so, what? Make an assumption that he'd refused to delay his run by 5 seconds to help the clearly-in-need-of-aid walker?

But as I approached the runner an odd thing happened. He started to speed up. At first I thought it was my imagination. I do not yet have the best instinctive sense of my pace without looking at the Forerunner. But it quickly became clear that I was not imagining it at all. This guy was speeding up. And the only possible interpretation was that for some reason he didn't want me to pass him. What a total ass!! Well, you can be sure I sped up, too, and left the ass's ass in the dust. Or actually the mud, as it were. I didn't say anything. But at least I kicked his ass.

OK. That sounds completely testosteronish. "Kicked his ass" indeed. But it was about the only thing I could think of to do right then and there without confronting him over something I couldn't honestly be sure he did. Speeding up like that just isn't done. It's outside the code of behavior, except, of course, in a race. Only assholes do it. People like me, who sort of speed up a little bit when being passed just on the basis of inexperience, get a pass, because we don't speed up anything close to as much as this guy. He went from a 10 or perhaps even a 10:30 to an 8. I know, because I was doing about a 9 when I reached him and after finally leaving him I looked and was doing a 7:45. That's a big difference. Far more than simple drift.

I don't know. Perhaps I don't really hate everyone. Perhaps I'm just feeling frustrated right now. And perhaps I'm feeling a little sensitive about the disabled guy out walking his dog in the miserable weather who has to suffer the indignity (yes, I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that he would consider it an indignity) of asking for help with a simple (it would have been simple for me, in any case) task like clearing the bottom of his shoe, and then to have that request rebuffed! Or maybe the problem is that we've been discussing Civil Liberties in class. I think that's always hard for me because teaching about it makes me so aware of how far short of our ideals we have sometimes fallen. And then to have more than half the class think it's just fine for us to torture prisoners. Sigh.....

Or perhaps I'm just feeling a little lonely right now, for some reason. And I'm taking it out on the world around me.

I think I'll go for a run....