the royal treatment

The other day I tripped over a branch in Rock Creek Freeway (some would call it a park, but whoever thought putting a busy road absolutely parallel to a beautiful creek packed with birds, strollers and generally other important things should revisit urban planning school), except I didn’t realize I had tripped over this enormous Amazonian vine crossing the roadway until I had gotten off the ground to look back and indeed realize there was this freakish vine running across the road. In the time it took me to get up this erudite 60ish master of the universe gentleman type biking my way shouted at me “YOU should have picked that up!” To which I apologized profusely for tripping and agreed yes, I should have had some kind of pre-cognition that I was about to eat shit. Clearly being a selfish gen-y wasteoid meth addict, I had lazily chosen to trip over the vine rather than remove it. I really would have picked it up, just as soon as I realized it, and my face, was fucking there! I then asked him if he had any good stock tips, whether he was Yale ’67 or ’68 and inquired as to whether he wanted some grey poupon slathered on his ass.

This is my Mr. Rogers moment for why sometimes we need to look in the mirror, and see if the guy above is staring back. Because it’s too easy in high places like DC, with powerbrokers and lobbyists and lawmakers and Honorifics and executives sashaying through their populated schedules on the reg, to watch someone eat shit over a branch and blame them for not not de-littering the park. Sometimes this town can pass a $900 billion law before it can show kindergarten level humanity.