Do not throw baked goods

I was at Universal Studios the other day, and for those who haven't been there, here is the setting: There is this giant escalator. There are four of them in a row, separating each one is a cement walkway. On the side of each escalator there is a walkway lining its way to the top. I was with my friend and he got a cookie, we start to embark on our first escalator going up.

First Escalator

My friend is eating his cookie and we see this one guy trying to prove it to himself that he can walk up the stairs. We came to the conclusion that it would be funny to throw a cookie crumb at this person, I never claimed to be mature. He wouldn't do it, so I take the crumb into my own hands and I throw it. I immediately look away and we have a good chuckle.

Second Escalator

A guy makes his way to the top and confronts me. He asked me if I threw a cookie at his brother. I had to be honest, the jig was up. So I said that I did and, then I apologized for it. Then, expecting it to be over, and being terribly wrong, he says," Well, that's not cool man, you cant do that to my brother". With nothing else to say, I said, "you're right ". Hoping to evade this crazy experience, my friend and I head to the next escalator.

Third Escalator

He catches up to us, obviously looking for a fight. He starts going in to," I'm from Hawaii man, we don't pull that shit there." I so desperately wanted to point out just how stupid this sounded, I have heard to beware of guys from Compton, East LA, and Brooklyn, but never Hawaii. However, I bit my tongue and kept trying to ignore him, and at this point all the whole population of the escalator is staring at me. At this point I already apologized; there wasn't anything left to say. At the top of the escalator he shoves my back, barely causing me to sway, but I knew what this was a prelude to. So I say to him sternly," Do not touch me", and I continue to walk. Approaching the final escalator he full on pushes me from behind and I stumble a couple steps and through my hands up as if to say,"what the hell". Saved by the bell, an employee sees this and gets in front of him, separating us. We take this as our time to head up the last escalator.

Fourth Escalator

The employee does his best to keep him away from me on the escalator, but he gets past him and starts making his way to me. At this point he had watery eyes caused from sheer anger, and he was trying to tell me off. The employee told this lunatic," if you have a problem, go to the security center and they can settle it." He says the only thing I didn't want him to say," No, I can settle this right here." The escalator reached summit, and I start walking briskly, hoping to avoid a brawl in front of Back to the Future: The Ride. Then I realized that I should hold up for my friend, so I go off to the side, bracing myself for attack. My friend caught up and walking behind him was Hawaii-thug. He approaches me and says that we are cool and he grabs my hand and pulls in for a pat on the back.

First of all, I don't see why we were suddenly cool, but I rolled with it and continued walking. Second of all, I know that I did initiate it with my baked good throwing, but was that response completely necessary? Should I have hit him when he pushed me? Possibly. Would I have ended up being beaten up or kicked out of the park? Yet another possibility. There are honestly these people who just can't wait for a reason to fight. I always was told this, but never believed it. So morale of this Story Of Lunacy: Watch out for people looking for a rumble, they won't last long in life if they piss off the wrong person. And: Do not throw baked goods.

The way they were

Lets say that, god forbid, someone close to you passes away. Then, imagine all of the pain you might feel. Then, what if someone who never even met that person tried to console you by telling you how great that person was. Is this really a positive thing? To me, a person trying to pretend they knew the person you spent a lifetime trying to understand, is just insulting.

So, is it any different when a celebrity dies? When a famous person dies, is their really any reason to think of it as a tragedy? You can be sad that a fellow human has lost his/her life, but in most cases, you never even saw that person. You became enamored with an image on a silver screen. In my opinion, it insults the person because they were more than the image they projected. A person worth mourning is a person who should be above what they showed an audience.

Just because a person is deceased, doesn't mean we have to have the knee-jerk response to say they were saints. It may honor a person more if you love and remember them as they were.