Not that anyone e-mailed me about it or anything, but I decided that I've got to get a little less preachy in my posts. People need to keep in mind that I am rarely serious, even (perhaps especially) when I say I am. As a former History major I do tend to deal mostly in fact, but since facts are up to interpretation, shut up.
Take today for instance. Gorgeous day. I figured I would go for a bike ride down to the lovely Raritan towpath which, incidentally, I originally wanted to spell toe path, probably as two separate words, with a hyphen considered. I only bring it up since I'm generally (read: always) a stickler for spelling and slowly I struggle more and more to spell words like "the" (and in the interest of truthfulness, that is a mild case of hyperbole, which I've always wished were pronounced hyper-bowl). On the path, I thought I would go for a run. I did both of these things. While alcoholic beverages are prohibited, luckily for a lot of people they say nothing about porn because if you get near to where it intersects South Bound Brook, there's lots of porn and, surprise, beer cans near the creepy old train tracks going across the river. Sometimes when I ran that far I would stop and grab a few sips from a can to rehydrate and take a look at a few high-gloss photos for inspiration. Once before I had surgery I decided to bike all the way to around Princeton, about sixty miles round trip for me, and at least forty miles more than I'd ever biked. In some ways it went poorly, but that's for another time. I've got lots of mediocre towpath stories for a rainy day.
So right, interpretation of facts, what is fact, the acknowledgement that I only recieved a B in my one introductory Philosophy course (where I earned a B+ and my lilly-livered self never took the initiative to rectify it and while not exactly bitter I still think about it), etc. I don't know why I put in et cetera, I kind of hate that shit. So right, as I'm biking back after a nice stretch (literal stretching of muscles) that really wasn't particularly nice, I get to the outskirts of Johnson Park(where I still have yet to visit Olde Towne) and I'm just about to exit onto River Road, where I spy a Mexican guy with his two kids. I know what you're thinking, why did I mention they were Mexican? Well it's because they weren't white or any other race. Actually, I just needed at least one adjective so spice up that sentence, but really it could be the first reason.
So I'm biking towards them at no great rate and the one kid, who had made eye contact with me, I swear, makes a spin move right in front of me so that his back is facing me, not more than two feet away. I had nowhere to swerve so I jabbed the breaks and rolled right onto this child of probably seven, knocking him slow-motion to the ground, while trying to toss my bike so it wouldn't land on him (tire prints are sooo Spring) and, in the process, slammed it into my already brittle shin (they're both brittle, but it only hit one). Luckily the kid was fine and here's why I really mentioned they were Mexican - I knew they were here illegally and had I really hurt the kid they wouldn't press charges. That's not true. It was actually because the father didn't speak much English so when I apologized (it might not have been much of my fault, but I still knocked the kid down, and it takes two people to have an accident in these kinds of situations), all he said in response was "Ees s'okay," repeatedly, with one of the winningest smiles I've ever seen. What the hell does that have to do with these people being Mexican? Nothing, I really only used to as an adjective, like I said, but people love to read into these things. What the hell does any of this have to do with interpretation? Well, you know, whose fault the accident was, you know. Thankfully I'm in good hands with All-State and like a good neighbor State Farm was there, except I don't have All-State, and where the Hell was State Farm when someone robbed my house on Christmas? I know the answer to that last part, and it is: changing my deductable to $500 so that when I had ~$470 worth of things stolen at college, they wouldn't have to cover anything. Then they called my health insurance to tell them not to pay for one of thirteen things tested for on a blood test. But back to facts, if I hadn't hit my shin, I'd count my little smashup a totally winning experience.
Speaking of winning experiences: The Buffalo Bills finally won again this afternoon. For as dinged up as they are, the Bills, were they any other team in the NFL, would be 4-2 right now. But such is Bills' luck that, with time running down in Dallas, an onside kick gets touched at exactly the ten-yard minimum, and too much time is put back on the clock after a booth-reviewed play. But that was a fortnight ago. Today the Bills were winners.
One last plug for winners goes to Bob Chiapetta, the equipment guy at my alma mater. All I know is, Bob always had a grungy towel fresh from the boiling laundry pot for me that would never fit around even my small to medium-sized frame. Nor did he blink the time I returned twenty-one towels. Good guy.
Time to go focus more on this Sox-Indians game.
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