Tuesday two great things happened 1.) my wife and I bought a dyson. 2.) phantom planet finally released a new record. Both purchases happened to be sale-priced, adding all the more to my excitement. All said and done this made writing a check to the IRS a bit more forgettable as I spent all night and the following day vacuuming and listening to one of my favorite bands. These actions left me with a very, and I
mean absurdly clean home. We mainly have wood floors and I'm not kidding that vacuum picked up more 'stuff' than I'd like to admit. 3 emptied canisters later 5 out of 7 rooms had its own solid go-thru. I called my mom and told her all about it; she ran out and bought one wednesday. I think I found my plan b for when the band is over. All of this led me to remember a funny story... onto the real meaning behind the subject title.So for some reason this morning when I woke up and the sun was shining through my dustless blinds and onto my gleaming floor I was reminded of a funny thing that happened on the third day tour. I, as usual, can't remember what city we were in but Dominique and I took a walk from the venue one day out into the town. Someone from the show warned us not to go too far as it was a bad part of town supposedly. It was the middle of the day though and there was hardly any traffic anywhere. Five minutes out this truck pulled up to a stop light and a witty dude-man (the term we use to describe any not so fluent guy we run across on the road) rolls down the back window of a truck with a rebel flag on the back of it and starts to bark at us. Literally bark - and growl. It was so unusual that I had to say something back. Obviously dude-man was trying to be demeaning, so I turned around and yelled back at him 'are you alright?' as if I was confused why he would be barking like a dog-man. I don't know - maybe he had gotten bit by a dog and needed a rabies shot and his only way of letting me know was by sticking his head out the window and growling. Anyways, he acted a bit startled that all 135 pounds of me acted like I wasn't scared, but then he gained his composure and dropped a few f-bombs. At this point I was just staring at him and then his fellow dude-men in the truck opened their doors as if to warn me they'd be coming out and barking as well. The light turned green and they sped off.
For some reason after remembering all this, I read through James this morning. Mainly touching on chapter 1. When it says 'slow to anger' it really hit me when I think about that little incident. I was pretty quick to let dude-man know I wasn't going to just let him bark at me although his actions didn't really warrant my response at all. Anyways, I thought about how great it would be if every time something started to bug me I just took a deep breath and blew it off instead. I don't know, It's a thought.
So tonight - as my wife and I took a bike ride guess what happened? Yeah, some dude-man started to yell out his window at us. Seriously - not kidding. What the heck right? All this, with a little help from the dyson, led me to one conclusion.... it's a dirty world out there isn't it? Oh well, I won't let it bother me too much.
