The Streets of Los Angeles
I am writing with a ballpoint maraca right now. It’s a promotion for Mexicana Airlines Visa. As I prattle on paper, it rattles my nerves. I will switch now.
No matter what anybody says, I still feel that feeding a mechanical pencil backwards is a skill. And that tiny hidden eraser at the end of the pencil, a waste of rubber. It takes nothing short of a surgical procedure to remove it if you’re a little too enthusiastic about erasing one day. A separate eraser makes more sense, let me know if you need one, my daughter has about 50.
Three people from our congregation and a visitor from Michigan were caught in a drive-by shooting last week. All four were between the shooters and their target, a young man riding his bike on the sidewalk. Yet, none of them got hit by intentional fire or stray bullets.
As the study reminded us yesterday, even Jehovah’s servants are not immune to “time and unforeseen occurrence” (Ecc. 9:11!), miraculous deliverance is the exception rather than the rule. But as Deborah says, “We should have been dead.” She felt the bullets whiz by her as she lay on the ground after tripping. The bicyclist was on the ground next to her, most likely dead, they didn’t stay around long enough to find out.
It reminded me of my early education in LA street survival, when you hear gun shots, hit the ground (and very importantly) DON’T MOVE.
Lately I find myself making driving decisions based on how dangerous I perceive a street to be, how likely it is that I’ll get shot driving there.
A kid cut us off on the way to the hall last night. The passenger then torpedoed a bottle from the car toward an older Asian man waiting for the bus. I didn’t get the license plate and the bottle missed, but I did see the Obama sticker on his rear window. It doesn’t matter who’s president, human authority is too limited to deal with all the problems.
If anybody is in need of Jumbo Tri-Write Ticonderoga pencils that say ABC on them, let me know. Ever since Brent told me about David Chesar, a schoolmate, who invented triangular shaped writing utensils for ease of handling, I can’t pass by a Ticonderoga pencil without holding it. So when I saw they were selling them by the box in the Teacher Awards section of the 99 cent store, I had to buy about 500 of them. I jest. What can I say? She must get it from me.
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October 23rd, 2009 at 10:34 am
This is funny. I’ve actually had long conversations about pencil vs pen. Writing with pencil is MUCH harder than writing with pen. You use more muscles in your hand and also you have to pay more attention to the pressure you put on the paper according to the sharpness of the lead. I think as a society we’ve gotten lazy even with something as little as our fingers. Pens were invented to accommodate that…as we got more and more lazy as a people. Next we’ll all be in flying cruise ships asking for a “cupcake-in-a-cup” i.e., Wall-E. You’re laughing but you know I’m right.
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
…about the lazy part, not the cruise ship Wall-E thing.
August 14th, 2010 at 3:06 am
or Dicteronga as Lia likes to say.