Belligerence

Some stuff you can’t swallow.

You can be the parade marshal on the high road but still decide sometimes that the high road’s not for you. You want the low road instead, the one where you can paint graffiti on parked rail cars and pull garbage cans into the street to make people swerve into the ditch.

Sometimes, you want the low road so you can call a spade a spade, so you can unload the wheelbarrow of crap that you’ve been handed, dump it on the offender’s front lawn and ruin their tulips. With no apology.

High road folks wear white shirts with no coffee stains, low roaders wear yesterday’s t-shirt, the spots and grime evidence of engagement. You can’t be neat and clean and run your motor on the low road. I know that much. You have to have the stuff that goes with not letting disgusting things slide. It gets messy.

I also know this. When you get to a certain age, people think you’re too tired or weak to worry about. No threat. No consequences. Such a miscalculation, such ignorance. Old people’s power is all wound up in their age. At 76, I am a ten-thousand-watt low road.

And I know how to drive.

____________

Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash