Absurdity upon absurdity
Sometimes, in the course of human events, one witnesses something so outlandish that the absurdity of life becomes so undeniably evident that one begins to question one's own sanity. I have had two such experiences in the last three days.
Two days ago, while trying to get ahead on my calculus homework, I had occasion to see (and not hear) two deaf people in a very heated argument about something. Not being versed in sign language, I have absolutely no idea what they were flailing about. Now, I would have chuckled then and there, except for the fact that I was slightly afraid that their evident anger would wind up pointed in my direction.
The second event I witnessed not even a half an hour ago. At a park in north Denver, there were two guys with video cameras filming a third guy on a skateboard trying to land some move. The guy with a skateboard had a very well established pattern of holding his board, running, jumping onto the board, coasting, jumping onto a concrete ridge thing, falling off and cussing. I became quite familiar with this as an onlooker because it had to have happened at least a dozen and a half times. Toward the end, as he got more and more frustrated, his skateboard was punished more and more severly for each successive failure. Now, my knowledge of skateboarding is less even than my knowledge of sign language, which left me in a similar situation. When his skateboard finally gave up the ghost, catastrophically folding in the middle, as no skateboard is designed to do (and a throughly energetic round of cussing from the one who broke it), I decided that my lack of knowledge was probably a good thing.
Two days ago, while trying to get ahead on my calculus homework, I had occasion to see (and not hear) two deaf people in a very heated argument about something. Not being versed in sign language, I have absolutely no idea what they were flailing about. Now, I would have chuckled then and there, except for the fact that I was slightly afraid that their evident anger would wind up pointed in my direction.
The second event I witnessed not even a half an hour ago. At a park in north Denver, there were two guys with video cameras filming a third guy on a skateboard trying to land some move. The guy with a skateboard had a very well established pattern of holding his board, running, jumping onto the board, coasting, jumping onto a concrete ridge thing, falling off and cussing. I became quite familiar with this as an onlooker because it had to have happened at least a dozen and a half times. Toward the end, as he got more and more frustrated, his skateboard was punished more and more severly for each successive failure. Now, my knowledge of skateboarding is less even than my knowledge of sign language, which left me in a similar situation. When his skateboard finally gave up the ghost, catastrophically folding in the middle, as no skateboard is designed to do (and a throughly energetic round of cussing from the one who broke it), I decided that my lack of knowledge was probably a good thing.