Lucky to be alive today

This morning, before continuing to do battle with a text that someone else had 'translated' by putting each sentence into DeepL and pasting whatever came out of it into the English text, I went for a walk around the large park 100 metres from my front door.

On the way back, I was walking on the footpath along a hedge and was approaching the corner where I would then turn left. Shortly before getting to the corner, a monstrosity shot round it: a large container with a pre-pubescent girl sitting in it and behind it, a woman on the bicycle, presumably her mother, pedalling very fast. I took another step or two forward and then the father, in another monstrosity, with yet another child, shot round the corner, only very narrowly missing me. Another step, and I'd have been killed.

I screamed at the father, "Sind Sie verrückt? Sind Sie verrückt?" ("Are you mad? Are you mad?"). No reaction. The bastard (no other word for such an arrogant moron)...the bastard didn't slow down. He didn't look back. He couldn't even condescend to throw an "Tschuldigung" ("Scuse me") over his shoulder.

And then, with the realisation of how close I had come to death - I am not exaggerating - my knees turned to jelly, I started to feel dizzy and I was suddenly close to tears. 

How can these bastards on a bicycle - with children in their care!! - be so bloody careless about other people's safety? Both parents cut the corner so sharply that they came very close to the hedge themselves. Don't these bastards think that there might be someone round the corner? If I'd been older and in ill health, I might have died from a heart attack anyway.

Sometimes, I think we should have the right to carry guns. To rid the world of these dangerous bastards. How society can allow them to have control over their own children beats me. 

A rousing quotation

I'm very fond of quotations to give me guidance in life. One of my favourites is from John F. Kennedy, the US president assassinated on 22 November 1963. In his inaugural speech [Antrittsrede], among other things, he said this: "Ask not what your country can do for you...ask what you can do for your country."

I often think of this rousing [mitreißend] quotation when I think that "someone should do something about that". Whatever "that" might be.

Back in 2013, when my walking group was at risk of falling apart because three of the regular walking guides had other priorities, I kept saying: "Someone has to do something. Someone has to do something!!"

And then I remembered John F. Kennedy's quote, as mentioned above. And I realised that I can't expect other people to do what I wouldn't be willing to do myself, so I tentatively [zaghaft] started to offer some walks around this town. Later, I added walks around Wuppertal, Solingen and Remscheid, as I got bolder and more familiar with the countryside.

Why am I mentioning this quotation? It's because after more than 50 years, an opportunity for people to meet up has come to an end as no-one wanted the responsibility of making tea and coffee and putting some cups out. The last person to organise this meet-up, an Italian woman, had done so for around 6 years. She always asked for some help, for someone to arrive 30 minutes earlier to help her set out the teacups. Only one woman regularly did so once a month.

Everyone else liked to come to drink tea and coffee, eat biscuits, and chat, but no-one wanted to do anything to continue the "institution" that had been in existence for more than half a century. Shame on them.

It's the same with my walking group. When I regularly offered walks, some fellow walker would frequently sidle up to me [sich an mich heranschleichen] and tell me of a great walk they knew. When I said that they could lead the walk themselves, they would gasp and look at me in horror and say, "Aber ich bin berufstätig!" ("I work!") And I wondered what they thought I did all day. In those days, there was a lot more translation work around. And I wasn't the only walking guide who was still working.

More than 300 people get the details of each month's walks, which means that if everyone led one walk a week, then each person would only need to lead a walk every 6 years. Scarcely anyone is willing to do so, but lots of them want to enjoy the walks. 

Well, I believe that, these days, fewer and fewer people are willing to put themselves out [sich jds wegen wegen Umstände machen]. A great shame. 

As another quotation says: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. 

So, if you want a friendlier, more communal society, you have to be willing to get out there and to help bring people together.