High beams
I’ve started walking after dinner, for a couple of reasons, mainly because walking after a day of sitting helps me move on from what I’m doing for a primary income stream these days. Also there’s some health benefits from doing so, rather than just eating and moving directly to the couch to consume whatever the streamers have decided I should watch this week.
It’s the time of year here when it’s just about perfect weather at dawn or dusk. Something about watching the lights come up or go down on the day does good things for whatever I have left of a soul.
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That means I’m wearing a vest bright enough to be seen from space, because the neighborhood doesn’t have street lights (something I like) and too many of the neighbors think the speed limit is a suggestion and move down the main drag like they’re trying to clear the gates before the drawbridge closes against a zombie apocalypse.
I’m kidding about the drawbridge. But there is a gate. Can’t have just anyone wandering in to use the pickleball courts.
There aren’t many sidewalks here, either. Parts of the development have them, but where I normally walk is sidewalk-free, and so my options are either walking the side of the road, or a ditch, or someone’s front yard. I stick to the side of the road, because the ditch is too ditchy and walking in someone’s yard is grounds for at best a starring role in a series of Nextdoor posts or at worst a headline about how great “stand your ground” laws are.
My first choice clearly upset whoever was driving the large truck that let me know how they felt about it by honking their horn and flashing their high beams at me, opting to deafen and blind me in an effort to help me correct the clear error of my walking ways.
Or they were concerned I might not see them and wanted to be sure that I safely navigated the often treacherous roadways, lest I come to needless harm. I’m all for the benefit of the doubt.
High beam flashing is the thoughts and prayers of confrontation: it gets a reaction out of whoever it’s been directed to, makes the flasher/pray-er feel better, and accomplishes nothing.
Not that I wanted them to get out of the truck and discourse with me about the value of walking and whether my walking was interfering with their forward progress, but it would have been a nice change. Something different.