So, I watched the documentary Blackfish a few weeks ago on CNN. It was clearly biased(like almost all documentaries in the history of film) and sort of a PETA propaganda piece. Or at the very least, an "anti-Sea World and how horribly they treat the Orca." Fine. If you're passionate about a subject and feel an overwhelming need to expose injustices, I tip my cap. I'm a sucker for any good story being told--or maybe--any story at all being told well. It was compelling, and I unapologetically succumbed to its tug at my heart strings. I'm not ashamed to admit that I wept a little--a grown arse man--for some people and sea mammals that I had never and would never meet. Catharsis. I went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning--a Sunday--and did family things(breakfast, baths, yelling, screaming, time-outs, threats, spanking, etc...ya know, the usual. And then my kids woke up. HELLO! I kid my wife, I kid.) Then we went to church. Nice sermon, had me thinking about the damn killer whales and how easily humanity mistreats so many of Earth's precious living things.

We left in a somber silence--from me, anyway--and headed out in separate directions--my wife, daughter, and mother-in-law getting ready for the traditional post-Palm Sunday Easter Egg Hunt, and my son and I on our way to his soccer game. We drove and talked and sang and talked and drove some more. Stopped by the house ever so briefly for me to drop a deuce and him to change into his kit--seriously that's what these soccer gays call their uniform--but, I digress. Southward and onward. To the "match" on the "pitch."

We are on the highway just a few minutes, before I notice traffic has come to a mighty slow roll, if not complete stop, up ahead. About 200 yards down, I detected a few police lights accompanied by cars and motorcycles funneling traffic into the left lane. "No big deal," I say, "probably just minor fender bender." The lack of ambulances and fire engines lent credence to my premature assessment. But the more my car was funneled, the closer I got, the more my newly awakened eyes saw and sent signals to my brain, the uneasier the feeling in my stomach. We inched closer and closer and I instinctively guided my son's attention elsewhere. "Look at the birds over there" I might have said. Or "make sure you eat your protein bar and drink some Gatorade"--anything to take his attention away from what I knew was looming. Death. I had seen the flipped upside down SUV laying on its roof, side smashed totally in. I knew it wasn't good. As we passed by the metal carnage on our right, I yelled at my son to look left at something trivial--something so incompletely insignificant in the face--the faceless face--of what I witnessed to my right. The vehicle left me sans the imagination of survivors on the passengers side, which, by some sort of physics laws was facing me, taunting, with the frailty and/or randomlessness of life. All life. But human life. I passed in slo-motion and saw a lifeless body--only moments removed from hopes and dreams of a life-a fulfilling life!!--ripped away by utter randomness. Or bad luck. Or fate. His faceless body was covered in a blue tarp, from father to news fodder in minutes. In seconds. In the snap of a finger, the blink of an eye. In nothing...

This post was edited on 4/14/16 at 12:39 am