Margaret's Bench -- September 2007
(… a continuation of thoughts from Margaret’s Bench of
April, June
and July/Aug '07. Updated June
2008.)
Three days after my mystical experience of
human beings and love in the Safeway parking lot, I walked into
a frightening and infuriating demonstration of its opposite.
I don’t mean that I had an encounter with hate. Hate is not the
opposite of love. Hate is more like love in a seriously
delusional state.
It wasn’t hate that came at me during a daily walk, but casual
cruelty, spawned by indifference.
Starting from home, my regular long walk follows our gravel
driveway out to the gravel lane, and the lane out to the paved
county road where the speed limit is 40 m.p.h. but cars
routinely whiz by at 50 or more. It crosses the county road and
continues a few hundred yards to another gravel lane, a two-mile
loop through fir and cedar trees that offers glimpses of the
gleaming straits down long dirt driveways. Then back to the
speedy county road, before returning home along our gravel lane.
Takes about an hour. Good walk.
On this day, I was heading west on the county road, toward our
lane, when a pickup truck came over the rise ahead of me. Now,
when a car approaches a walker on the county road, if no vehicle
is coming in the opposite direction, the driver commonly makes a gentle
swerve toward the middle line. Then after passing by, the car
swerves back into its lane. This action says, “I see you.
Because you are so much more vulnerable than I am right now, I
will move aside and give you more room than you really need,
just to be sure that nothing bad happens when we pass.”
That’s what I do when passing a walker or biker on my way into
town, and it’s pretty much what always happens when a car passes
me on my walks.
This pickup truck did the opposite. As it approached, it made a
slow swerve in my direction, toward the shoulder of the road.
I stopped in my tracks, rooted by a ridiculous stubbornness
about jumping off the shoulder and into the gutter. Too proud to
show fear. At the same time, I knew that if that truck kept
coming, my pride would vanish in its back draft while I lunged
for safety.
Just before I felt in imminent danger, the pickup swerved back
into the middle of its lane. As it passed, the truck’s driver
looked right at me, a big grin on his face. I’d never seen him
before. He was a young man, about 18, wearing a knit cap pulled
down around his ears and a day or two’s growth of beard. He
twiddled his fingers at me in a mocking wave, and then he was
gone. Through truck’s back window, I saw the back of his knit
cap and the back of another head beside him the cab. The truck
sped away, its tailgate dwindling off into the distance.
I was deeply shocked. Obviously, this jerk had swerved on
purpose to make me look at him and wonder if he was going to run
me down. To scare me. He saw me as a toy, something he could
poke and make jump.
And he succeeded. My heart was pounding and my knees felt shaky.
I hadn’t noticed his passenger until after the truck passed.
Maybe he was showing off for a mate, or for his girlfriend.
“Look, baby—I’ll make the old broad on the road jump, then we’ll
share a laugh.” I walked on home feeling alone, depressed, and
illogically ashamed.
Later the same day, I drove into town myself and stopped at the
city library, which for some reason was crowded with
high-school-aged kids. Suddenly, there he was. I’d only caught a
glimpse of him in his truck and wouldn’t have recognized him
now, or even looked twice, if he hadn’t still been wearing that
knit cap pulled down over his ears. He was with friends. He was
talking and laughing in a loud voice. I walked right by him. He
smelled like cigarette smoke. Of course he didn’t notice me at
all.
In no time, my opinion of that young man flattened and hardened
to the consistency of the linoleum under my feet. I thought that
he was a dangerous, bad person. Someone who played chicken with
defenseless people on the road. And smoked cigarettes! And
talked too loud in the library!
We were as unalike as two people could be. I was glad of it. I
would cheerfully have shamed him in front of his friends, if I
could think of any way to do it. If there were anything that
could make this obnoxious punk feel shame.
Before the week was out I recorded both events in my
journal—both the mystical experience at Safeway and the
frightening experience on the county road, along with that odd
postscript in the library. I knew it all went together, without,
at first, having any idea why. Today, though I’m still not
completely sure why or how these incidents go together, I’m
still certain that they do.
One day, in a Safeway parking lot, I saw that love is built into
our hearts and bones, that it’s something every human being
holds in common with every other. This is true. And then a few
days later, the opposite truth came barreling down the road,
forcing me to see it, know it, and acknowledge it. Forcing me to
pay attention.
The jerk in the pickup truck is made out of love, just like the
hand-holding couple in the parking lot. Just like me. Nothing he
does can change that fact. At the same time, in the same love +
able being, he is able to see a stranger on the road as an
object to manipulate for a laugh.
And though I might put a more civilized exterior on the inner
beast, all it takes is a moment’s fright for me to see him as
completely separate, completely other, unworthy of more than my
contempt.
Which tells me, despite, oh, such a deep reluctance to believe
it, that the jerk and I have much in common after all.
More on this subject at another time.
-- Margaret
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