Down the street, there is an intermittent pack of dogs that used to live at a construction site behind my apartment. After the construction was finished, the dogs moved to the street where I walk my dog. When I say intermittent, I mean sometimes they are there and sometimes they are not. At first I got a stick to fend them off when we walked by. They are fraidy cat dogs and won’t come close, but bark like crazy. One morning, in an especially dark mood, I found their barking too annoying to tolerate and I got mad. I started beating my stick on the road yelling “come here!” to the dogs. If a dog can sense a persons fear, they sensed something different in me that day, because they ran, and I mean ran over the horizon out of sight. But I mashed my stick up into bits so I needed a new one. I found a piece of PVC tubing at a concrete dumping ground. I sawed it off to the right length. I made one end pointy, to fend off dogs. I put a champange cork in my end so it is nice and comfortable to walk with. I found a wine cork on the beach, it fit perfectly, so I shoved it down inside. I bet it would float. I drilled a hole and put a lanyard through for a wrist strap and also I can carry my cell phone on it and keep it out of the sand at the beach. I can poke it down in the sand and secure my dogs leash to it while I take a swim. It’s turning into quite a sophisticated walking stick. Now, I worry about someone taking it when I leave it outside. Isn’t that moronic?
You know what else is moronic? I’m typing all this crap about my piece of junk walking stick when really I can’t stop thinking about that girl who was taken hostage recently. My personal philosophy is if a person takes a hostage, the hostage is considered dead and the hostage taker is guilty of murder. If they are in a building, then blow up the building. The hostage taker, the hostage takers family, and his country, will be held responsible for the loss. The message is that taking a hostage means certain death, will harm your country, your family, and everyone you know, and is never a way to get what you want.
But something about this girls picture gets to me. I don’t want her dead. According to my own policy, I’m supposed to consider her dead already. I don’t want to do that, I want her to get back home OK. It’s really something that I’m having a hard time not thinking about.
Also I realize that I wouldn’t be as concerned about it if it wasn’t a pretty girl. It makes me ask myself all kinds of questions. What kind of person am I? What if I was the hostage? How would I feel? How would I want everyone to feel? To me, growing older is like staying the same, while everybody else gets younger. I used to go to the doctor and he was an old man, now I go to the doctor and he’s a little kid. Walking down the street, everyone seems young, I remember they used to seem old to me. Looking in the mirror every day, I can’t see myself getting older. I think I’m still the same. What I see in this picture, is a person too young to be there.
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She is certainly a young one. Hostage situations are very scary. I have no idea how I would react if I was in her shoes. I suspect I would consider myself dead as well, become angry and a real smart mouth to the point my captors would certainly want to kill me.Are these dogs wild that you were talking about or are they just strays? I see a man in my neighborhood walk with a stick, but his is no where near as fancy as yours!!
You’re guilty of…having a human nature. We all have triggers that cause us to respond more emotionally than we expect to a situation, with me it’s children, with you pretty girls, for others it’s animals. Don’t beat yourself up for being so human. And the age thing…we ALL hate that!
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean about the girl. It hurts me to watch things like that.Cool sounding walking stick. I’m going to start calling you ‘Mr. Bond’.
Gosh. Good post. A lot to comment on. First of all, study after study has been done to prove that people are naturally drawn to attractive people. (Um, hence the word “attractive” ? ) Pretty people get more help, get more attention, and have better “luck”.As for the getting old part, I couldn’t relate to this more if I had written it myself. Since when where the NFL players younger than me?? By YEARS?? Sometimes I feel like my life has passed me by… but that is a depressing post that is better left for my own blog.Cheers!
I understand how you can’t get something like this young woman hostage out of your mind. Back when that woman Susan somebody drove her two little boys into a lake while they were strapped into their car seats and stood there and just watched the car go down…I dreamed about it, cried about it, thought about it every waking moment. I wanted to go there and tear her apart piece by piece. Some things just get to ya and this is one of those things for you. I love the idea of your walking stick. Sounds like a pretty cool one. My husband would like that one too. Patent it and sell them!
Dang, Mark, you’re like MacGyver on the walking stick creation :)Really sad about the hostage, so many bad things going on.Yes, people around us are definitely getting younger. I’ve noticed that too!
I feel for this girl too and I certainly hope that something can be done to extricate her from the situation. There have been last minute rescues before and hopefully we’ll be able to pull something off for her. Otherwise, I think its a lost cause and will be saddened to read about her death and the way in which she was killed.Back when they took that hostage maybe a year ago where they cut off his head and showed it – I had an intense desire to watch it for some reason. I know – sounds absurb and ridiculuos – but I felt I needed to watch it to understand on a different level what we were up against over there. Well I found the video on the internet and watched it — grotesque and extremely disturbing, but it certainly makes me yearn for the innocent people who have fallen victim there on such a different level. I sure hope they can do something for her.Cool stick too…and like you, I’d be worried someone would take it too! haha
I think you may have invented something with that stick. You better get a patton(SP). It is nice that you are worried about this girl. I know you think it is because she is pretty but I think it is because she is so young. You are a good person!!!! Don’t ever forget it.