Dad Yelling Crosswalk Dec 2006

I was yelling at this lady for backing into me in the crosswalk (well, the car really just tapped me, but I yelled anyway.

Before that I was yelling at someone at work for being too loud.

I'm becoming my father. He yelled.

I wish Dad were still alive. I'd ask him: Did you ever feel bad ten minutes later, after you'd yelled at someone?

It was not her fault she was being incautious. Even if she killed you it wouldn't be her fault, as far as the squirrels and the trees were concerned. Supposing I died, would my wife be angry with her, then find a way to forgive her? Is there a reason to wonder these things? Did the people who died in the concentration camps look back from their afterlife and find a way to feel forgiveness for the Nazis, as Vonnegut envisioned in Happy Birthday, Wanda June?

What about the lady in the car, who almost backed over me? Did she imagine herself in my shoes, and she in mine, and wonder to herself, whether she would have yelled at me the way I yelled at her? I hope so!

My blustery behavior notwithstanding, I believe I think the best of most people, and I want them to think the best of people as well. How can this be so? In practice I'm a boor like all the other boors.