Road Rage
So picture this. It is the second day of school for my daughter. She is attending pre-K at the local elementary school and I had taken the first day off so we could all go as a family. Since I get off work fairly early I wanted to pick her up after school to hear all about her day. So this is the first time I get to do this and I’m anxious about being late. As fate would have it, traffic is heavy on the way to the highway. In front of me is a guy in a new Mercedes talking on his cell phone. The temp tag is laying on the back window of the car, illegible. He keeps sitting there in the stop and go traffic, only moving up long after everyone else has. It is frustrating me, but since traffic is moving at all of 25 mph it’s not like he is holding me back. We finally make it to the on ramp and he is still dawdling up the hill (and gabbing on his cell phone). Apparently he felt I was tailgating him so he brake checks me. At this point, I’m thinking “Fine, just get on the highway and I’ll pass you later.” I take my foot off of the accelerator and wait for him to move on, but he has a different idea. Read more »
Posted: August 7th, 2008 under Stress.
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I recounted the loss of my daughter’s tooth on an earlier post. Well she has more loose teeth now and recently another one started to give way. Hope had been pushing it with her tongue for days, but as loose as it was, it just refused to come out. I’d try to give it a good hard wiggle, but she would wince and I did not want to hurt her. The worst part is that Amy’s parents had harvested corn on the cob from their garden but Hope did not want to eat any because of her tooth. Everything she ate was soft. 
Yesterday I posted about my participation in a group called Melee. In a nutshell, you dressed up in medieval garb, grabbed weapons made from padded PVC and competed in mock battles. The ultimate issue of the post was that you should keep your head in stressful situations, but I also mentioned how joining this group changed my life forever. It sounds melodramatic, but it is true. This just goes to show you that even the most innocent things can have a huge impact on your life. 
I have always been a dork. It has taken years for me to realize this, but unfortunately it is true. As much as I’d like to be as cool and debonair as James Bond, there will always be that sliver of dorkiness in me that prevents a complete transformation. So then it should come as no shock that for a period of years I enjoyed dressing up in medieval garb and beating on other like-minded fools with padded PVC swords and spears. Truthfully, it was very fun and it had a profound impact on my life, but that is a discussion for a different post. Suffice it to say that for many years, you could find me at a city park on Saturday afternoon engaging in mock battles with 50 or 100 others. It was quite a spectacle (if you want to see what it is about, check out 
My favorite scene in the Wayne’s World movie is the part where Garth is working along on some kind of mechanical arm. Rob Lowe walks up to Garth and asks “How do you feel about change?”