An epic tale of braking suddenly

I’ve known many idiots in my 19 years on this Earth. I’ve dealt with the mind-numbingly moronic from here to Chicago, fumbled my way through strained conversations with the stupidest of the stupid. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared me for what I encountered tonight.

I was driving home from Hollywood Video, cruising along at a steady 42 MPH down the quiet boulevard. The sun had just set and, due to the absence of street lights, it was quite dark. It was almost too late to stop when the shadowy figure fell into the beams of my headlights. I slammed my foot on the brake and my car lurched violently into its halt. What the hell was that? A deer? A coyote? An escaped mental patient? I caught my breath and looked up to see what had slipped into the road.

And there he was. Tall and skinny, he glided along atop a skateboard. The hood of his sweater was pulled low over his head as he glanced over his shoulder, barely even acknowledging my stunned presence. There he was, dressed all in black, a teenager rolling along a heavily trafficked road at 9:45 in the evening, barely a silhouette against the night sky.

The most insufferable idiot I have yet come across, and I nearly ran him over in my Toyota.

He made no motion indicating any apologies; simply skated beyond the glow of my headlights and disappeared. I sat for a moment, the car idling quietly below me, and contemplated the boy’s actions.

Was he a daredevil, one of those what-doesn’t-kill-me-makes-me-stronger types? Was his suicidal street-crossing an extreme testing of the fates? Was he “living life on the edge?” I noticed he wasn’t wearing a helmet or protective gear of any kind, so that was a definite possibility.

Maybe he had a death wish. His girlfriend broke up with him and, heartbroken, he neglected to look before crossing the street on his way home. He would heave readily embraced death, and the approaching glare of my headlights were to him like the siren call of freedom. But at the last moment, he remembered his mother, and the image of her pale, tear-stricken face at his untimely funeral caused him to reconsider. It was at this moment that he rolled away from my car and towards home – towards Mom.

I contemplated for a few more seconds before finally deciding that he was, in fact, a moron, unaware that typical humans are unable to detect heat signatures. I decided that he simply expected people to stop for him, even if he scared the absolute crap out of them by darting across the street like a gazelle.

I also decided that I had spent far too many precious seconds of my life mulling over the boy’s motives, and that I probably should have just ran him over and called it good.