the interloper
I am an ugly, dimwitted, grimy and smelly human being. While this has most likely always been the case (especially when I was really young) I used to be able to hide it behind my youth, to a degree anyway. Now I'm being called on it quite frequently.
There's this park down the street right along the Assiniboine River that I used to like to walk to, I'd just hang out by the riverside and spend some time staring at it all. Though I won't kid you the Assinniboine is not a very pretty river to look at, it's grimy, slow rolling and littered with trees from the autumn floods, in fact, the river is a natural drainage ditch that carries the red sludge of the prairies and everything else it might pick up along the way out to Hudson's Bay.... aren't all rivers such ditches? maybe, I don't know that much about geography, or geology, though I do know that some rivers are more beautiful than others. For instance, I think the St. John River is a beautiful river.
Anyway, this story is not about riprarian environments. -- I wrote that sentence specifically because I wanted to use the word 'riprarian' -- This is about my inabilty to view this particular river anymore. River parks are, as you know, filled with very specific groupings of people, some of the more predominant groupings include: lone women and men with animals, couples, families with children, and runners. Now, as you can see, there is no grouping for dimwitted and grimy 30 year old men. In fact, if they were able, I'd bet all those groups would get together and erect a sign at the park gates explicitily disallowing entry to characters displaying such a disposition.
Here's proof, I'm in the park caught halfway between some daydream and wondering at the rust on the river, when some family with a couple of kids, not quite school age, walks by. And, as they do, one of the children captures me in her stare and in passing tries to hand me some stone that she was carrying, when her mother caught eye of this she screamed, "don't go near that man!" and, then, yanking her by the arm, continued to letcure her on the evils of single men in parks.
Now, disciplinary methods aside, I do think the lesson here is a good one, you don't want your kids talking to strangers, weirdos or not, anymore than most strangers probably want children talking to them.
Nevertheless, this incident has further affirmed my status as an unwanted visitor. And this episode was not the only one of its kind, not only have I experienced incidents of the same genre before, I've documented cases of incidents in other genres that carry the same unwanted theme: I've on occassion been accosted for smoking, leered at by couple's whose privacy I was evidently invading (despite the fact that they're in a meadow surrounded by twelve other people), hit by bicycles (I had forgot to include bicyclers as a legitimate park group), and hollared at by runners for being 'in the way.' Some of the above events are not so much unique to parks, but are an unfortunate hazard associated with my daily existence and as such I've learned to tolerate them.
The pervert label, however, I take much more seriously, to maintain what little dignity I have, or whatever it is that somehow manages to hold together the scraps of my life, I've got to restrict these park visits.
There's this park down the street right along the Assiniboine River that I used to like to walk to, I'd just hang out by the riverside and spend some time staring at it all. Though I won't kid you the Assinniboine is not a very pretty river to look at, it's grimy, slow rolling and littered with trees from the autumn floods, in fact, the river is a natural drainage ditch that carries the red sludge of the prairies and everything else it might pick up along the way out to Hudson's Bay.... aren't all rivers such ditches? maybe, I don't know that much about geography, or geology, though I do know that some rivers are more beautiful than others. For instance, I think the St. John River is a beautiful river.
Anyway, this story is not about riprarian environments. -- I wrote that sentence specifically because I wanted to use the word 'riprarian' -- This is about my inabilty to view this particular river anymore. River parks are, as you know, filled with very specific groupings of people, some of the more predominant groupings include: lone women and men with animals, couples, families with children, and runners. Now, as you can see, there is no grouping for dimwitted and grimy 30 year old men. In fact, if they were able, I'd bet all those groups would get together and erect a sign at the park gates explicitily disallowing entry to characters displaying such a disposition.
Here's proof, I'm in the park caught halfway between some daydream and wondering at the rust on the river, when some family with a couple of kids, not quite school age, walks by. And, as they do, one of the children captures me in her stare and in passing tries to hand me some stone that she was carrying, when her mother caught eye of this she screamed, "don't go near that man!" and, then, yanking her by the arm, continued to letcure her on the evils of single men in parks.
Now, disciplinary methods aside, I do think the lesson here is a good one, you don't want your kids talking to strangers, weirdos or not, anymore than most strangers probably want children talking to them.
Nevertheless, this incident has further affirmed my status as an unwanted visitor. And this episode was not the only one of its kind, not only have I experienced incidents of the same genre before, I've documented cases of incidents in other genres that carry the same unwanted theme: I've on occassion been accosted for smoking, leered at by couple's whose privacy I was evidently invading (despite the fact that they're in a meadow surrounded by twelve other people), hit by bicycles (I had forgot to include bicyclers as a legitimate park group), and hollared at by runners for being 'in the way.' Some of the above events are not so much unique to parks, but are an unfortunate hazard associated with my daily existence and as such I've learned to tolerate them.
The pervert label, however, I take much more seriously, to maintain what little dignity I have, or whatever it is that somehow manages to hold together the scraps of my life, I've got to restrict these park visits.
posted by j/r at 12:48 p.m.
2 Comments:
although i do agree that it is probably better to steer clear of men in parks, in fact i too steer clear of men in parks...this woman and her extreme reaction probably says more about her than it does about you...first of all she is probably just some ignorant witch that has lost all her sense of civility now that her husband has taken to screwing the one-eyed-clubbed-foot portuguese fortune teller in downtown winnepeg rather then dare spend another night in her frigid coot...therefore she is lashing out in a most obscene fashion towards anyone that merely looks at her beloved rat-faced-seventy-i.q.-ed children...you should stop this downgrading nonsense you have taken to (as evidenced in your last couple blogs) and realize that they are the ones that are cracked and you are just floating through the world...and goddamnit go to the park when you want to!...and next time you run into these savages do what mick would do...tell them to get the fuck off your cloud...
Yeah, the downgrading is a bore indeed, and so to is 'the floodway,' but it's also an objective fact, which I think is as ridiculous as that, though unfortunately I couldn't say it as clear as:
"she is probably just some ignorant witch that has lost all her sense of civility now that her husband has taken to screwing the one-eyed-clubbed-foot portuguese fortune teller in downtown winnepeg"
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