Out With A Bang

Avoiding news...

Usually I try to avoid the news. It's depressing. I am trying to be positive about life so the more negatives I can deflect, all the better.

However, while I am workamping, I do search the news occasionally for anything about Lake Hartwell. We do from time to time have some strange events happening around the lake. I try to ignore all the sensational headlines about other stuff while I search, but one caught my eye. I just had to read it.

"107-year-old man killed in standoff with police in Pine Bluff, Arkansas"

I ponder the unsaid, the unwritten, the what ifs.
Was he really that big of threat?
Have we thrown common sense out the window?
Was he just tired of this crazy world?
Did he contemplate suicide by authority force?
Did he just want to go out with a bang?

Seems like if one had managed to make it 107 years, one would stick around just to see what else happens next. But a shoot out?

I wonder what kind of life he lead that he made it through 107 years old before being killed in a standoff.

Life expectancy for males born in 1906 was set at 46.9 years.

Clearly he beat many odds throughout his lifetime until his last fatal encounter.

Before I got around to posting this...  more news has come out. It seems the old fellow had been asked to move out of his rented room. He had only been there a month. He was legally blind and deaf according his friends from church.

It's just so sad.

I think Andy Griffith and Barney Fife would have ended this much differently. We could all learn a lot about how to deal with cantankerous people from that magical show.

At the age of 107, seems like the authorities could have just waited for him to doze off, then relieved him of his gun.

At 107 one probably still needs nap time now and then.

If the police can't disarm a blind deaf 107 year old...

Well, it's just mind boggling.

As for me, I really should keep avoiding the news. It's depressing.