Indifference
I had a bad day yesterday.
I live in an older apartment on a streetcorner overlooking a park. During the day, the park is frequented by walkers, bicyclists, soccer teams, and so forth. At night, things are quiet. Late-night joggers, walkers, pram-pushers, and dog-walkers go by quietly… as they should, when it’s nighttime.
But there is this one guy who, on a few separate occasions, brings his dogs down the street, and tries to control them when they start barking. I say "tries" because he doesn’t make a very good effort. He’s got three little yap-dogs, and when something excites them, they start barking. All of them. As you would expect. But rather than pick the dogs up or walk them away, his solution is to stop, right there, and try to make all the dogs sit. Needless to say, his efforts fail, and typically result only in more barking. This can go on for 2-3 minutes at a time – which, when it’s happening outside your bedroom window – seems like an eternity.
So last night, at 10PM, as my older daughter started complaining that she had run out of her medicine – medicine that is controlled and that only she can reorder and that she should have reordered but didn’t and now was suffering because of it and trying to make it my fault – the barking started up outside my window.
I lost my mind.
I flew outside, down the stairs, in my underwear, and started yelling. "Hey! That barking needs to stop! You bring those dogs around here every night to bark here right outside our bedroom windows! If you bring those dogs here again, I’m calling the police!"
Okay, so, first, yes, I totally overreacted. And I used nukes when conventional weapons or – gasp – even diplomacy might have worked better. I was tired – tired of the barking, tired of the complaining from my family, tired of life.
And upon reflection, I felt worse, because I knew I had overreacted. And the guy’s response (not to mention the way he fails to manage his dogs) led me to believe that he must be a little bit retarded in some way. He didn’t apologize, nor did he yell back in anger – either of which would have been, I concede, appropriate – rather he tried and failed to pick up his dogs and run across the street. As he crossed the street he said "Oh, don’t go there, I don’t bring them every night, don’t go there, go ahead and call the police!" Don’t go there? I thought that was an odd thing to say. After he crossed the street he literally ran off, dogs in tow, and didn’t come back – just a very strange situation overall.
So after my anger and indignation at the total idiocy of letting your dogs bark for minutes at a time in someone’s side yard wore off, and was replaced with the realization that this guy must really have been too stupid to know the difference (as in not mentally competent to be able to consider others’ needs), and that I therefore might have sandblasted a soup cracker with my comments, I was left to wonder at the total indifference of humans in general.
Because maybe this guy really is mentally retarded, which would explain the quantity of dogs, his lack of handling competence, the choice of breeds, and his response to their barking (and mine).
Or on the other hand, maybe he’s just a sociopath.
Nevertheless, I felt bad on many levels. I felt bad that I had overreacted. I felt bad that I might have inflicted more pain than was deserved in this situation (if indeed any was deserved at all). I felt bad that this guy could be so indifferent, and bring this whole experience to me through that indifference. And I had to take a stark look in the mirror at my own indifference, and how easily and frequently I dump on people just because it’s too hard not to, or I just don’t care when I should.
It’s a pathetic commentary against society, to call out its indifference to itself. Doubly so, since I clearly suffer from it myself. Would it be easier to care if life were better? A moot if not rhetorical question: life isn’t better; therefore, I cannot know.