Wet Shoes and a Naked Football Player in Everyday Ramblings

I felt in need of a serene vista today. I took this from the ferry leaving Washington and crossing the Columbia River into Oregon last Friday.

In spite of the weather reports we had more than expected rain yesterday. It came in squalls, some of them heavy and in the evening I was not prepared for the heavy rain and didn’t have my rain pants on.

The traffic remains remarkably horrid here. There are huge delays, long waits and very impatient drivers, a third of who are doing something on their cell phones. I couldn’t bear taking a bus ride that normally, (or at least prior normal) takes 10 minutes full of wet disgruntled people for an hour home from the grocery last night so I decided I would try taking the bus to the other grocery that is closer technically though psychologically all the way across town.

But that didn’t work either.

So I walked, and got soaked. My shoes are still wet 20 hours later.

This change in our ability to actually get around (it is affecting everyone) is very troubling. I am beginning to think that I won’t be able to live here in ten years. When I am 75 I am not going to be able to walk three miles each way and carry groceries home in the rain nor am I going to want to. It is gridlock with the ride sharing cars and the delivery trucks and the increase in population.

We have no money for infrastructure improvements and we have in our metro area now an estimated 16,000 homeless people.

They put the combo locks back on the garbage bins again. There was a totally scary guy going through the bins last week. Drugs and concomitant mental illness.

So into this mindset, this Condition Yellow as the concealed carry advocates call it I got an instant message from one of my students yesterday saying she hadn’t been able to make it to class because her very upscale neighborhood streets were closed off due to the fact that a neighbor, 78 years old, had shot a man he thought was trying to break into his house.

One of the salient features of this story was that the man that was shot was, um, completely naked.

My student had been home most of the day with her garage door and windows opened and this news terrified her and led her to surmise that this must be an individual who high on meth had somehow gotten into her neighborhood and at some point divested himself of his clothes.

In talking to her later she said something I understand but that shocked me.

The homeowner did not kill the suspected intruder; he shot him in the abdomen. She said, that the neighbors were talking and because he was on meth that the homeowner just should have killed him and put him out of his misery.

Wow.

Now, add to the mix…the suspected intruder was besides being completely naked, of African American descent.

And now as more is revealed he is a former NFL player (a football player) who graduated from Stanford and played until 2008 when an injury sidelined him. He was living in a rental property less than a mile away and had no criminal record.

You think maybe his girlfriend locked him out of the house??? Who knows but no matter what bizarre set of circumstances led him to be naked in this guy’s well manicured and gated backyard I do not think he deserved to be shot.

Nor do I think he deserved to be “put out of his misery”.

This is such a rich story that is way too complicated to have been fiction. There is backstory on this guy’s father who was also an NFL player and because of drugs missed a Super Bowl game and ended up in jail for robbing expensive homes in Beverly Hills California.

Like father like son? Or just a very very bad day?

Still it was the best excuse I have heard so far why someone couldn’t make it to class.

It puts my wet shoes and discomfort into perspective and seems to be a whole microcosm of this mix of the rich, guns, fear, racism, financial inequality and crumbling infrastructure that we are hearing about right about now.

Last updated June 24, 2016