What, me read? Isn't that a 4 letter word?

I had an appointment this week at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center to have an echocardiogram, which by the way is an EKG times 10. It's a very thorough heart, artery, and vein exam. Contrary to what you may have read about the VA, these people are very good to Vets. By the by, I passed and was told I could continue to be the stud of a man that most people believe I am. Scratch that one off the list, as I am still good in that department.

I made my way up to the 3rd floor of the matrix of hallways and clinics and held up a Louis L'Amour novel, 2 copies of Reader's digest and 2 issues of Popular Mechanics and asked the 50 or so people in the waiting room, if anyone wanted something to read. Not a single taker in the bunch. Seriously? The western was Rider of Lost Creek; an awesome depiction of the 1870's gunslinger era in the old west.

I laid them on the table and sat down and chatted with two grisly old Vets my own age. One had flown in from the Philippines and was suffering from congestive heart failure. The other one lives in Vidor and they are lifelong buddies from the Vietnam war. I had already read what I brought to augment the usual "stuff" that is on the tables in this place, so I simply chatted and exchanged experiences of my time passing through the Clark Air Force Base on my way to the war.

Joan Martin hit the proverbial nail on the head with Tuesday's column titled "Writing & training my brain" and I told her so. I love to read and spend a great deal of time exercising this skill every day. Yes, I call it a skill, because evidently, it is vanishing. I call what I do exercising because as Joan stated, it does indeed exercise our aging brains.

"Writing is like reading, on steroids." I quote myself. Writing is a seriously bumped up version of reading, because writers create. We pull words out of thin air. We weave stories and ideas to fill the need of readers and ourselves. I literally see the stuff I write and often will read and reread my own column 10 times before I submit it. I write because I must. I read because I can't stop thirsting for knowledge and adventure.

But what about those who never read more than they have to? They read street signs and food brand names. Restaurant menus have become a challenge to  many unless they have pictures with a number beside them. They read Tweets and one sentence paragraphs. They speed read everything, making Reader's Digest look wordy. If you ask one of these many what book they last read, they look at you with a thousand mile stare, once reserved for combat veterans.

Online programs such as Twitter are actually making people stupid.  Texting four word sentences, if you can call them that, are promoting the same degenerative retardation of our cognitive abilities. To prove a point in how low we have fallen, take a look at this column.  I write in very short paragraphs, or no one will read it. If a friend sends you a joke and it is more than 3 short paragraphs, do we read it?  Highly unlikely, right?

Reading books is already a socially diminishing skill. Those of us who still do it are vanishing dinosaurs and when and if we pass on to the next life, what does the future hold? Like Joan Martin said, each of us has a story inside us. Each of us crave to have that story told. Reading and writing go hand in hand and if you have a keyboard and a computer, start writing stuff down. You never know who will read it down the road. You may discover that as a reader, you are also a writer and to me, that is something special.

Truth be told, if you are reading this... you are a reader and like I pointed out, you are much in the minority. Reading is a dying skill being replaced with someone or some piece of technology talking to us to tell us what to think and what to do. "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that. Punch in this code and then leave a message."

Smart phones have us reading everything in micro-bytes and using our fingers to communicate. Do everything virtually for happiness. Press 1 for extra happiness. Press 2 for self-gratification. Pres 3 to put your brain in neutral. Lord help us in the future.

Am I as considerate as I think I am?

Each and every day I marvel at what life is and what I expect out of it. I walk through life – or drive my Jeep on our roads and see the vast skies and the many wonder-filled things around me and I inhale it in a way that is truly an adventure.

I see people around me absorbed in their own sphere and wonder if they “see it” too.  Being the cynic that I am, I find that I prejudge my fellow human, automatically demoting them and this is probably in error. Many appear bored and robotic. I have to remind myself that many are suffering pain, or hardships.

My bride upbraids me regularly for this skepticism and I automatically play it down as humor on my part. The truth is, it isn’t humor. I admit my fellow humans regularly erode my belief that we are upwardly evolving. On a daily basis, what I see is what was depicted in the comedic movie “Idiocracy” and this is wrong of me.

In this futuristic piece, humanity has bred itself mentally backwards to the point that stupidity is the norm. A social retardation is so prevalent that no one seems to notice, and they constantly ridicule each other for being stupider than they are. To quote the synopsis on Wikipedia: “The film tells the story of two people who take part in a top-secret military hibernation experiment, only to awaken 500 years later in a dystopian society wherein advertising, commercialism, and cultural anti-intellectualism have run rampant and dysgenic pressure has resulted in a uniformly unthinking society devoid of intellectual curiosity, social responsibility, and coherent notions of justice and human rights.”

I am a people watcher and according to my bride, someone who reads too much into the casual behavior of those around me. “You think too much, honey!” I watch people and occasionally am guilty of baiting a subject line to see how they will react. I resent the implication that I am a troll or a devil’s advocate, but readily acknowledge that I “seed” the forums and Facebook for opinions.

I want to know what people think, or believe they believe and then often will challenge them to explain what and why they believe. Is that wrong? I’ve always contended that anyone who challenges you to define what you believe is your friend and I still believe this.

We are all floating on the river of life, me included.  I need to rediscover that balance where instead of seeing distracted and complacent masses, I once again discover how incredible people can be. I’ve become a glass half-empty dude and that needs to change.

I have to see the humor around me and be less critical. Now to be honest and I’ve made this pretty clear in the past; I base a lot of my negatives on what people do when they drive their cars and trucks.  And to be frank, I think the behavior specialists will be on my side when I say this is a very good indicator of what a person is made of. Rude and selfish drivers shouldn’t consider themselves kind and caring people. They are not. If you tail-gait and dangerously zip all over the danged place, you are the opposite of considerate. If everyone would keep their distance and do the speed limit, there wouldn’t be a traffic jam.

If a person swerves in and around cars on the freeway, barely missing rear-end collisions and then walk into their job smiling and greeting everyone, they are fooling themselves as to what kind of person they are. They fall into this group, “unthinking society devoid of social responsibility, and coherent notions of justice and human rights”.

I would like to sit down with these reckless drivers and have a casual conversation about what kind of person they believe themselves to be and then show them videos of their driving “skills”. I imagine that would be quite a conversation piece. I do not want to imply that I am a perfect example of a driver, but when you are behind the wheel of a lifted Jeep with over-sized tires, it’s kind of a good idea to always imagine you are driving on ice and make deliberate signaled lane changes.

On my way back from Houston the other day, I was rolling in the middle lane on I-10 doing exactly 68 mph on cruise control when out of the corner of my left eye I saw what can only be described as a black missile coming up behind me. The bespectacled middle age man crossed 3 lanes and my brain registered that he was going to clip the back driver’s side of my truck. Now jerking the wheel on a lifted Jeep at near 70 mph is down-right dangerous, but it was my only option or get quartered.

I jinked and he missed by a whisper and shot off ahead of me, zigging and zagging until he was no longer visible with brake lights signaling his departure. Because of my distress, I’m glad fellow gearhead Dandy Don wasn’t with me and although I didn’t curse, I wanted my justifiable pound of flesh. I took a couple deep breaths and thanked God I wasn’t lying in a twisted wreck. I have no idea what this fellow’s hurry was, but I imagine he was simply driving like he always does.

I think I am a considerate person for the most part. I try to be. If you come to my house, I will offer you a cold or hot beverage and usually pretty quickly. I’ll offer you a seat and try not to dominate the conversation and if you follow me while I’m driving, I stop at red lights and stop signs 100% of the time and always signal my intentions of a lane change. I like to run on cruise control either doing a minimum of the speed limit or with the flow of traffic.

However, I am probably a miserable failure in other considerate behavior and may need to hire on as an extra in Idiocracy II, if they make it. I’ll have to ask my bride. She is truly a considerate person quite observant when I am hypocritical of other drivers.