The Art of The Non-Apology

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I’ve been trying to develop the art of the non-apology.

Let me know if any of these works for you. They’re some that I’ve been polishing, so it helps to know if they’re effective at all.

“I need to give you my apologies. I’m sorry I’ve been subversive lately, but your timid passivity brings out the negative aspects of my character.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been cranky lately. It happens when I work too much and miss lunch.”

“Sorry we crushed your house. You never know when you’re building where the warpath is going to be.”

The non-apology is the best tool for when you don’t want to admit fault, but you don’t want to directly pass the blame either. It’s a passive-aggressive technic, for sure.

It’s a great writing tool as well, because the reader can detect the inequality, and they start to develop a liking for one character and a dislike for another without knowing for sure why they like one over another. It’s subtle implication at its best.

 

Ambassadors of Mountain Biking

I like writing. But I really love mountain biking.

So my two favorite things to do are words that sound the same. Writing. Riding. If there’s no context, in the spoken word, you might get those two mixed up.

My most recent ride took me up Rock-A-Billy and down Ridge Line. These are just trail names, so they’re meaningless to you unless I show you a picture…

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…or two.

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While I ride, I’m always meditating on something. I was considering the sport of mountain biking. It has exploded in popularity lately. I’m not sure why it has exploded, but I considered a comparison. Is this what it was like in the 1960s when surfing was hugely popular? I’ve heard it said that the beaches in California were so crowded with surfers that you couldn’t spit in any direction without hitting one of them. The ocean itself was so crowded, people actually got in fights in the water over “stolen” waves. Trying to figure that out in my mind, I honestly can’t imagine how you would make lines in the ocean so everyone would get a fair turn.

In mountain biking it’s easy: people going up the hill have the right of way, ’cause it’s a tough job going up. People going down pull over and let the riders going up have the trail. Once the mountain goat herd has passed, the trail is yours again. On the way down, if you meet someone slower than you, it’s a simple trick to say, “Passing on your left,” or “Passing on your right.” This way the rider ahead of you knows to stay where they are and where you’ll be when you pass. Actually, I never say, “Passing”; I only say, “On your left,” or “right,” whichever side I’m on.

I guess, “Passing on your left,” is the formal way to say it. Kind of like adding “sir” or “ma’am” after “yes”.

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“Yes sir.” I learned something about myself: I’m an informal rider.

I think next time I go, I’ll try a new phrase. Something like: “Hello sir (or ma’am), I’ll be passing on your extreme left (or right), if you don’t mind.” And then after I’m ahead, I’ll turn and say, “Have yourself a wonderful day, my new friend!” That’ll get their attention.

One other unspoken rule is to leave no trash up there on the mountain. We respect the trail and leave it clean. Just like surfers are the best advocates for a clean ocean, mountain bikers are ambassadors of their sport. Mountain bikers keep the mountain clean. I’ve seen dudes having an ice cold beer on the tailgate of their truck after a long ride. They could have thrown beer bottles against the rocks. They could have broken the bottles and left glass everywhere, but the mountain isn’t a bowling alley parking lot, or a concert venue, or a wedding reception center. They packed the bottles out with them. Good form, gentlemen! Good form.

Prejudice

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If our first response is a reaction, it’s usually wrong.

When we choose not to react and take time to investigate what is causing us to react, we can usually learn a lot.

I spent a day in a venue with a group of people I definitely wouldn’t normally be around. They were “vape-o-sucks,” which is my pet peeve name for anyone who sucks on a “douche-flute,” which is my pet peeve name for a vapor administration device. They were actually alright. The people, I mean. I only had to tell a few of them to blow it away from me. Most of them realized, without me telling them, that I wasn’t hip to the vapors coming my way. One guy would turn his head and blow the mist away from me, without me mentioning it. Another guy would move away to take his puff of fruity smelling vapors, and then he would come back when it was mostly gone. Kind of reminded me of someone trying to be polite with their farts.

A lot of the people I talked to were friendly and genuine. With some, I even actually no kidding had stuff in common.

The place was outside, so I tried to stay upwind as much as possible. I could still smell a lot of it swirling around the venue. There’s no question that I inhaled an unfair amount of the junk. Some of it smelled like raspberries, while other vapors smelled like maple syrup. Personally, I don’t understand the need to scent it. Why not just let it smell like petrol? Or tanned leather? Or aluminum shavings?

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The point here is not that I’m going to sue everyone at the venue for infecting me with secondhand vape. I’m not. The point is that I met a lot of the people who did that junk, and even though I still have no respect for the habit, the addiction, or the culture of “vape-o-sucks,” now that I’ve met someone who does it, I can see more clearly through the haze. These are regular people. They’re normal chumps just like you and me. Their gullibility is just more noticeable. It forms a fruit-flavored cloud around their heads.

Because of my discovery, I think I’ll treat people more kindly, regardless of their choice of chump.

Though I’m probably a better human for hanging with the vape-ohs and not hating, I’ve decided not to ever do that again. The next day when I woke up, I swear I could smell nitrous oxide. At least half the day I thought I should be laughing, but no laughs came. When the smell of nitrous finally wore off, I thought I could smell things normally again, but I ate some yogurt—it smelled like nachos.

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120 Years Old

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Photo: The Grumpy Old Dragon

He’s super old, but he eats healthy proteins….insects!

Since I’m interested in living ’til I’m 120 years old, or more if that’s possible, I enjoy learning tips on being healthy. Whether I follow those tips is debatable. Quite often I find myself victim to the abundant life. There’s so much food available it can be easy to choose less-than-healthy items.

It can be easy to choose larger-than-necessary portions also. Someone once told me in our culture we have a “portion distortion”. Portion sizes are larger than they need to be.

In the area of portion though, I take blame for making my own too large. The portion recommendations on packaging seem humorous at times. What? Two cookies? Who stops at two? I’ll eat a whole column of cookies sometimes.

Granted, I’m spending the energy. My metabolism is relatively high. In the back of my mind, I’m justifying the entire column of cookies. They didn’t make me gain weight last time, so why should I hold back this time? Or, I ate a boat-load of carrots today, so I can indulge in half a boat-load of cookies at the end of the day.

It’s good to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but if I’m using them as rationalization for junk food, then I’m still doing it wrong, I know. I’m not doing myself any favors.

Another thing I might be doing wrong is that I don’t track anything. My weight doesn’t fluctuate enough for me to be interested in logging the non-existent change. How much activity I do is fairly steady too, so watching the flatline numbers would be as fun as the death to which I just hinted. In other words, my activity doesn’t have peaks and valleys. I don’t sit much at my workplace. If you do sit at work, you might be more interested in monitoring your activity. It’s supposed to be good for you.

As for me….Forget about keeping track of what I eat, or what I want to eat. I don’t monitor any of that except in my mind. At this point I should make it clear, if you haven’t gotten it already, that I’m not setting myself up as the prime example. You can learn as much from me by what I don’t do as from what I do do. As long as you’re observing more than you mimic. You could possibly learn something from my grey matter. I ain’t sure. There was this one ‘barchive post I did a while back about HEMP. In it I throw around a few factoids about the healthy qualities of that grain. Should you be interested in that post follow the link above, or this one: HEMP.

By the way, my healthy goals are to eat whole grains, olive, fish, avocados, lots of fruits and vegetables, eggs, legumes, jalapeños, and nuts. Most of the time, I stick to that. I even manage to limit my sugar and salt intake. Notice I wrote “limit”. That means try to only eat a little. It doesn’t mean zero intake. If you put a cookie in front of me, it’s not likely I’ll turn it down.

Along with all this healthy eating, I have this crazy idea that stress is a killer. One way I think I’m going to live to be 120 years old is that I don’t stress to much about anything. Stress drives people to eat.

And what do people eat when they’re stressed? Junk food. A cookie column, right? Knowing this, I keep the cookies far away from where I experience the most stress. So that’s my plan. Check back in with me in a few years to see if I made it.

The Ocean

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It would have been an ordinary day visiting the beach, but when we got there, the ocean was gone.

Our first question was, “When did this happen?” and then, “How did we not hear about this?” and soon after, “Where did it all go?”

Nothing that enormous can go away without notice. We knew it. There was another fact rolling around in our heads. It was the fact that something of that size had to be somewhere. It couldn’t just disappear. It couldn’t vanish. It couldn’t be gone forever.

Could it?

So we searched. We looked in the canyons first, and the ocean wasn’t there. There wasn’t even a streamlet. The questions came again, such as: “How did we not notice the streams drying up?”

We went up the canyons to the tops of the mountains to try to get a better view. From one mountain we could only see another mountain, so we tried the range that overlooked the ocean, when the ocean had been there before.

From there we saw them…all the people of all the world. They had gathered, like us, to enjoy the ocean, and stood dazed and amazed, like us, to see the ocean was no longer there. Animals gathered too. They came expecting to be cooled and quenched, and found only dry sand. Nothing was there anymore to wet their tired lips or cool their parched tongues or wash their skin, or even to give fish an element in which to live.

As we watched, we saw everyone and everything be consumed by the same emotion. Everyone grieved at the same moment to find the ocean missing. Everyone began to cry…and the tears were sublime. The tears couldn’t be held back. The tears rolled and began to drench everyone’s feet. The tears flowed and began to make streams down the beach.

As we watched, our own tears flowed and we made new streams in the mountains. Our streams of tears met and made rivers. The rivers formed and we knew then the ocean wasn’t gone. The ocean couldn’t be stopped forever. It was meant to be there and every single one of us who wanted it made it real again. We exist because of the ocean…but now we know it also exists because of us.

Now we have a new saying: “The manliest of men will not hold in emotion. He will cry an ocean.”

And I know it’s true because I tasted the salt of my tears.