"As I Was Walking ...

... down the Street One Day"--a 1970 song from the group then called the Chicago Transit Authority (later, just Chicago). I liked it. (Link to song.)

And it applied to me today, sort of.

At 6:30 this morning I had appeared at the local lab of University Hospitals to get some blood draws to see how my cancer is/is not progressing. I'd been tense, of course--as I will be until I get the results in a day or two.

As soon as I got home, I walked over to Open Door Coffee for my Morning Carryout Fix--I was masked, natch. I put it on as I approach the sidewalk on Main Street: You never know when someone will pop out of a building or car. Playing it safe.

I also leave it on until I get home (another couple of blocks): My balance is not good these days, and even a simple act like raising or lowering a mask (with a cup of hot coffee in one hand) is a bit beyond me. So, it's just easier to leave it on.

Anyway, as I was walking down the street, south on Main Street, a red pickup, northbound, slowed beside me, and the driver yelled "Fuckin' retard!" at me before gunning it on northward.

Well.

I actually laughed at first because I knew what he was probably referring to: my wearing a mask on an otherwise unpopulated sidewalk.

I sort of laughed again when I thought what my mother's response probably would have been: "Pronounce the participial -g!" (She often said that to me when I dropped the -g from -ing words--as did my older brother.)

I grew more annoyed as I walked on home because that wee encounter is such a metaphor for how so many of us behave these days--and I'm not really excluding myself.

We both look and judge with our eyes. He (probably) looked at me and saw an older guy wearing a mask on an empty sidewalk--and what else could I be but a ... you know?

He knew nothing about me. He did not know I'd been a teacher for forty-five years. He did not know I've published books and hundreds of book reviews and articles. He did not know I had just been to a lab for blood work. He did not know I've been dealing with cancer for fifteen years--cancer that is incurable, cancer whose progress medication and radiation and immunotherapy and (next) chemotherapy can only, well, retard, not cure. He did not know that these medications have made my balance very unreliable, that I have to focus on every step, or ...

And, of course, I don't know anything about him--other than that he felt compelled to yell what he did at a white-haired old man--a masked man--moving unsteadily down Main Street. I don't know what difficulties he's having with his life. I don't know why he is so angry. I don't know where he was going.

I don't know a thing about him, other than that he was in a red truck and got annoyed when he saw me.

But that encounter is, as I said, so representative of what's going on today: We look; we judge; we condemn--without really knowing a thing about our defendant, except how he or she looks.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Read about the disappearance of the Neandertals in that wonderful book I read some years ago: How to Think Like a Neandertal (2011). We see difference; we quickly decide that person is not in our "tribe"; we kill them--actually or softly or otherwise.

Or just call them names.

"Does anyone really know what time it is?" sings Chicago.

I do. It's time we change. In fact, it's way past time. In fact, it may be already too late ...