Friday, October 1, 2010

Dangerous situations

Today I had two "What the hell am I DOING???" moments.

You know the ones, where you start doing something that seems perfectly reasonable and safe at the time, and then all of a sudden it hits you that this may possibly be one of the stupidest things you've ever done? Those times.

I was riding in the car, and we were going around a bend, and I said to myself, "Holy crap. I have put myself in a very small thing on wheels, going like a hundred and ten miles an hour on a very skinny patch of road. Why on earth have I done this? Am I an idiot? The possibilities that this thing will crash and I will DIE seem very likely at this point in time. The ancient Romans would probably never have done something this stupid. I mean, alright, they thought it was smart to throw criminals in to fight with lions for everyone to watch, but honestly, if you think about it, this is not that much less stupid than that was."

Which brings me to my second "What the hell am I DOING????" moment.

I was petting my dog, and it occurred to me, "Wow. What if my dog suddenly realizes that in actual fact, I am not nearly as nice to her as I am to most of my people-friends (although admittedly I rarely snuggle with my people friends) and that, if she wanted, she could kill me (assuming that while my dog is smart enough to realize this, she is not smart enough to realize that she would probably not have any food if I were dead) or at least that she could bite my hand off to teach me to be far nicer and not ignore her."

This may seem like paranoia, particularly the second, but I think one should have these moments of paranoia every so often, to remind oneself how utterly bizarre (and sometimes idiotic) the things we do really are.