Nurse the Hate: The Stranger On The Path

I noticed the man running towards me on the bike trail.  He was exerting great effort but making almost no progress.  It is a great illusion some people are able to pull off.  They appear to be running with limbs flailing, yet they are somehow moving more slowly than any other person would while walking.  It was cold, so the man had on a knit hat and heavy sweatshirt to compensate for his exposed legs in shorts.  His face was a bright pink from the cold.  His glasses were fogged over.  He had the appearance of a middle aged man unaccustomed to exercise, as if his doctor had told him in a stern tone “Bill, you are going to need to start some sort of cardio exercise if you hope to see age 60”.  He was now trying to undo 40 years of stagnation. 

The man stopped his locomotion (I still can’t call it “running”).  He leaned down to make himself available to the bassets.  “Sir?  What do you call this breed of dog?”  His use of language was odd, like this wasn’t his native tongue, but he had no discernible accent.  I told him that these were basset hounds.  “Yes!  That’s right!  Basset hounds!”  I explained how we normally walked the woods, but it was too muddy today.  Regardless of the weather, these hounds expected their long Sunday walk.  “Yes…  It is good to go hiking and such in the wilderness.  It is important to find time for wilderness.”  He looked at me directly as if remembering something of great importance. 

“A family friend… a woman…  She will have great outbursts at almost anything.  She…  Even if she saw you standing here now, she would begin to yell at you with great volume.  And it can be about anything!  Anything!  Always arguing about small things with strangers.”  His expression changed slightly as he read my face.  I was struggling to see how this connected to basset hounds or the muddy conditions of the woods.  Something wasn’t quite right about this man.  He was non-threatening, but something was just off.  Yet he was dressed like a dorky suburban everyman.  He was everyone and no one.  He was indistinguishable from the herd until he started talking. 

“She was backpacking in Montana.” He then made a motion as if he was carrying a heavy backpack.  “While she was walking, a rock came loose from the cliff above her.  It rolled all the way down an struck her in the head!”  He made a motion to indicate a rock hitting his temple and even threw in the head recoil to emphasize the point.  I still had no idea where this was going and said “Wow.  What are the odds?  To be walking by at that instant?”  He leaned in to me and lowered his voice slightly.  “Her family said that they noticed this behavior of hers starting a couple of years after the hiking accident.  The doctors say that there is nothing they can do, because it is the brain!  They can’t just go in there and fix it…”

He paused, as if this were the great reveal of the story.  I wasn’t sure how to respond and looked at him, wondering if there was more.  I tried to figure out why he had brought this up out of the blue to a stranger walking two basset hounds.  He looked slightly panicked, as if he realized he had offered no context or link to our present situation.  He could feel that this wasn’t going as he had planned.  “Well, when I heard about that I went out and bought a helmet for when I ride my bike.”  He nodded, looking for me to confirm his wisdom for avoiding future brain injury from random falling rocks.

I stated the obvious.  “You know, that didn’t happen to her on a bike.  She was just walking.  If you want that helmet plan to work, you are going to have to wear it all the time.”  He looked at me with great seriousness, considering the flaw in his safety scheme.  I could see him weigh his risk right now at this moment, wondering if a rock or tree limb would suddenly fall from the sky onto his head.  He hadn’t considered how exposed he was to danger at this moment.  An expression of worry creased his forehead. 

I started to walk away from him, the dogs eager to continue.  A thought hit me.  I turned back to him.  “Your problem then will be you are going to be known as The Weird Dude In The Helmet.”  I thought he would give a little laugh.  Instead, he nodded at me as he turned to continue his “run”.  He was now deep in thought weighing the positives of helmet safety versus the potential for further becoming a social pariah in his bike helmet.  There was much to consider.

I look forward to walking the bassets down that path next week at about the same time.  I wonder if I will see a man chugging towards me in shorts and a bike helmet.  If I do, I look forward to a chat.  That man that has things to say.    

And I’m listening.