You Can't Fix Stupid
Mar. 11th, 2008 12:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_goren_showNight driving is calming, darkness and almost no one on the roads. No rush hour. No honking horns or cars cutting in front. It's almost meditative to weave around the streets with no destination. Wait... what's that.. flashing lights. Turn here go around, pick up necessaries from one errand and then turn for home. Flashing lights still adorn the road home, well damn it, keep driving since the last errand is just on the other side of them.
An accident then and the gawkers already in attendance sicken the mind as a quick glance shows a truck on the other side of the intersection across from where the fierce lights slice through the night. The urge to just go home - not to escape the carnage or the sound of the Jaws of Life or the click-tick of the lights blinking but to escape the spectacle in the making - grows. Look straight ahead. It is bad form to watch another's moment of suffering and feel nothing for them. Look straight ahead, inching through the too bright lights and past the army of emergency care workers laying out pylons and the three ambulances and four fire engines to make it out the other side alive. Inch along to freedom and ignore the bystanders with their tragic faces because it affects nothing inside.
Pause a half block on at the last errand, a carton of milk, a simple mundanity that makes it all so ridiculous as behind people are dying. Say to the clerk cynically "More proof fast cars and stupidity don't mix" and don't be surprised when she agrees. How many accidents has she seen, called 9-1-1 for at this corner? How many spectacles to be as blase as the jaded cynic who spoke to her so roughly? Ponder the response inside as change meets pocket and key meets ignition so that the car glides through the night, pulling over for another ambulance then moving on towards home as the realization that the night could not have ended any other way for the youth in the fast car with no real concept of consequences.
There is no pity for them. They made the choice to do whatever it was that led to the mangled blue wreckage the fire department is cutting into. That's the difference. They made the choice. Pity is for others - those with ALS, MS, fetal alcohol syndrome - real victims of circumstance who did not ask for their affliction. Those who drink and drive, do drugs and get behind the wheel, speed with impugnity; they deserve no pity when their choice runs headlong into fate and consequence. They cannot even say they didn't know it could happen to them. How often have they been assailed on television with similar outcomes? 'I've driven home hammered/sped through the light lots of times and nothing ever happened" is a fool's excuse and a lie they tell themselves to rationalize they're still safe drivers.
They are deserving of no pity and none rises from inside as you park, collect your things, lock the car and climb the stairs to your home. Once inside, you begin to shake and then throw your arms around the people you care for and thank whatever gods there may be that they are home and safe and not victims to other's stupid ways.
An accident then and the gawkers already in attendance sicken the mind as a quick glance shows a truck on the other side of the intersection across from where the fierce lights slice through the night. The urge to just go home - not to escape the carnage or the sound of the Jaws of Life or the click-tick of the lights blinking but to escape the spectacle in the making - grows. Look straight ahead. It is bad form to watch another's moment of suffering and feel nothing for them. Look straight ahead, inching through the too bright lights and past the army of emergency care workers laying out pylons and the three ambulances and four fire engines to make it out the other side alive. Inch along to freedom and ignore the bystanders with their tragic faces because it affects nothing inside.
Pause a half block on at the last errand, a carton of milk, a simple mundanity that makes it all so ridiculous as behind people are dying. Say to the clerk cynically "More proof fast cars and stupidity don't mix" and don't be surprised when she agrees. How many accidents has she seen, called 9-1-1 for at this corner? How many spectacles to be as blase as the jaded cynic who spoke to her so roughly? Ponder the response inside as change meets pocket and key meets ignition so that the car glides through the night, pulling over for another ambulance then moving on towards home as the realization that the night could not have ended any other way for the youth in the fast car with no real concept of consequences.
There is no pity for them. They made the choice to do whatever it was that led to the mangled blue wreckage the fire department is cutting into. That's the difference. They made the choice. Pity is for others - those with ALS, MS, fetal alcohol syndrome - real victims of circumstance who did not ask for their affliction. Those who drink and drive, do drugs and get behind the wheel, speed with impugnity; they deserve no pity when their choice runs headlong into fate and consequence. They cannot even say they didn't know it could happen to them. How often have they been assailed on television with similar outcomes? 'I've driven home hammered/sped through the light lots of times and nothing ever happened" is a fool's excuse and a lie they tell themselves to rationalize they're still safe drivers.
They are deserving of no pity and none rises from inside as you park, collect your things, lock the car and climb the stairs to your home. Once inside, you begin to shake and then throw your arms around the people you care for and thank whatever gods there may be that they are home and safe and not victims to other's stupid ways.
