Voices carry, a streak ends, and post-vanity recreation, in reverse order
Even the most attentive person who regularly uses a common walking/hobo-hiking/running/cycling path occasionally operates in ignorance of a threat to personal safety, or helps create one himself. This is a consequence of the unavoidable: No moving human manages to process 100 percent of the pertinent stimuli in a given environment. Little kids can dart onto the path between hedges in some places, and no one who exercises in public and covers ground at even an ambling pace can avoid unpredictable negative encounters with upright fauna, small and grown alike. Since we're all by definition ignorant at times, each of us ought to have a modicum of empathy for the entirely fucking ignorant, as we have at least dabbled in their life's toil, and even more empathy for the sort-of-benignly-ignorant species in between the generally alert and the completely oblivious.
An increasing percentage the ignorant people I encounter, though, seem almost gleeful in their ignorance. Or at least indulgent. In fact, to borrow from a trite descriptor, no one is really "woefully ignorant" anymore, because no one seems especially woeful about knowingly transgressing the boundaries of others. A casual "my bad" flung over the shoulder is now a standard, acceptable apology after you've almost taken someone out riding your skateboard around a quarter at 50 miles an hour, the reek of weed and unwashed ass trailing a remarkable distance in your wake. That was partly gratuitous, but so is this whole post, blog, and universe.
The other day I was running with Rosie, headed south along the Foothills Path between Arapahoe Ave. and the pedestrian bridge over the Foothills Parkway into my own neighborhood (a bridge slated for demolition this summer, but that's not central to the story). When running with Rosie on a public byway, which in effect means "Every time I go running," I try to be acutely conscious of the witdh of the path we are together consuming, and I try to get Rosie to run mostly in front of me in a mostly straight line. In spite of this, I am sure that I've gotten into people's way thanks to my space-cadet ways and the neglect it can cause, but I like to think I have never been willfully neglectful out there. Even if I were to be judged inconsiderate of others by some standard, if nothing else I want to harm to come of my canine companion.
Anyway, by the by, I was greeted by the sight of a young person on a bike, maybe a C.U. student, pedaling toward me from the south. A leashed dog trotted happily alongside, with the other end of the leash three feet away in the rider's hand. Together, they took up probably two-thirds of the width of the path, but to me that isn't the greater concern when people pull this person-dog-bike move. It's the fact that this kind of fucktrain does not exist in anything resembling isolation. It doesn't matter what kind of faith a dog owner has in the dog's obedience and ability to remain impervious to external distractions; all it might take for a serious accident to happen is my dog making a sudden move toward that dog or any number of similar scenarios.
I was apparently not the only one thinking such things, because following about 50 yards behind was another cyclist, this one looking like an actual cyclist on a real cycling bike, who was plainly disenchanted by the development he was rapidly catching up to. He had his phone out and was coasting and trying to get pictures, and probably video, of the hazardous ensemble making its way toward the always-crowded Boulder Creek Path. In so doing, he himself was arguably behaving in a way too risky to justify the perceived benefits of shaming an anonymous risk-taking attention-seeker. Maybe I should have gone for my own phone, filmed the whole thing, and thrown some rocks at passing cars on the Parkway for good measure.
This is a half-ass theory at best, but it seems as if social media and the lazy one-upmanship of Instagram photos and the like has turned most of us into less considerate people than we would be without the dubious magic of instant photos. I am not saying that this dog-hauler was hoping to be photographed, but it seems like people do things simply to get noticed more than they used to, because the sheer act of mattering, even in the form of pixels, seems to be a powerful motivator. Then again, maybe some people at all points in history will be the kinds of morons who do ill-advised things on public paths. I the spirit of aggravatingly using "post" as a prefix to airily explain social phenomena, perhaps we are in a post-vanity society, where nothing is really self-centered anymore because everything is.
Alas, Rosie and I no longer have a joint running streak of at least 20 minutes a day together. Just after we reached seven months, I gave her a day off last week for the first time since Oct. 31, when I was flying back from Boston after a week and a half in New Hampshire. I think she might have done something in the yard to one of her paws, because I noticed her favoring it after a couple of minutes of trotting, so we turned around, I dropped her off, and I tarried on in anguish.
So that's that, and it was inevitable anyway because it's going to get warm enough so that I really can't, or won't, take her for any runs longer than 20 minutes despite her obvious yen for running at all times. I myself still have a streak of 221 days going, which puts me within reach of my personal record of 229 days. That streak ended abruptly on July 16, 2017 with a knee injury that occasionally makes its restive presence known, but has yet to cripple me again. I expect bad things to happen in that joint whether I keep running every day or not.
So a fella who runs a blog primarily serving the ultrarunning community discovered my shitheap here at some point within the past couple of years and occasionally links to my posts (and I can usually predict in advance when this will happen). In this case I will not link to his blog even though I enjoy this guy's output and attitude, because I am going to discuss a comment made there by way of making a general point, and I am trying to not cause him any grief by inviting people to start acting like dickheads there.
This blogger linked to my recent post about the disqualification of a girl in the 1600 meters at the Wisconsin State Track and Field Championships, and in so doing, indirectly asked his readers whether they thought the DQ was warranted. My opinion, stated in salty language but not hard to pick out from the static, was that the fact a DQ like this could even happen (based on the evidence I saw) was another good reason to never allow your kids near a track (a bit of hyperbole, since I apparently ought to say that explicitly).
Someone offered this comment, which substituted for addressing the actual topic:
Every time I see the construct "Every time I read something by X, it upsets me," it upsets me that I can't tell that person face-to-face that he needs to escape the cruel authority of of whoever is forcing him to repeatedly explore X's horrible Internet output as it becomes available.
If this guy consistently can't understand or doesn't like what I say or how I say it, then why does he keep reading my posts, as his use of "every time" implies he does? And if the point was obscured, then how was he able to summarize it so well?
Some people are just hooked on Prophain, I guess. Hijacked against their will.
Because I write for a smallish audience of mostly known composition here, I could claim by extension that I couldn't care less what someone who doesn't know me thinks of my blog posts, especially complaints about their wording or profanity or darkness. But I actually find it instructive when people who know nothing about me respond, even if they do so indirectly and using a pseudonym, moves that might be called cowardly by more critical observers. I would probably think much the same thing about me, depending on my tolerance for profanity and nihilistic jabber, which happens to be quite robust.
As someone who has to use a range of written communication styles every day, I will get more into the whole broader idea of "messaging" when the time is right. Or maybe when it's wrong. The point being, later, but soon. Not to call this one whiner nasty names, but to try to look at my blog as someone naive to my ways might look at it.