by Pops » Mon 21 Nov 2011, 18:48:15
I'm usually pretty calm in a pinch, I can control my emotions pretty well. I'm also pretty good at assessing other's emotional state - a couple of the very few benefits of childhood in a dysfunctional family.
Once I was walking with my kids down to the corner store and here comes this car zipping down the overpass going way too fast to make the right hand turn at the bottom. The driver tries anyway, hits the inside curb and barrelrolls across the street slamming into a streetlight.
I sent the kids back home and ran over to the car. Just as I got there out jumped this dude, bloody as crap and just as high as a kite and he started walking away.
I told him "Man, you need to sit down, you're bleeding!" But he started yelling about going back to jail and gave me a look that said he wasn't interested in hanging around.
I decided he was gonna bleed. When John Law arrived I said 'he went thataway', it took two or three cars worth of law to convince the guy he needed to sit down.
So yeah, I'd stop, but I'd keep my eyes open.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)