How much trouble can a person get into by speaking ‘off the top of his head’ to a televsion reporter?
Doesn’t talking ’off the top of your head’ boil down to simply blithering random words as they pop into consciousness? Yes, ‘off the top of your head’ can, and often does mean, talking without using your head at all. Using the Thinking Guidance System,you recall, means taking into acount the LONG TERM effects of your actions.
Which brings us to the ’Talkative Guy in Bicycle Shorts Incident’
A few weeks ago, a husband, obviously in the grip of his Emotional Guidance System…shot and killed his wife while she was packing up to leave him. Now, the actions of the murderer guy aren’t even the actions we’re talking about, but admittedly a good example of not taking LONG TERM effects into consideration.
But, jump ahead, if you will, to the reporter for a local television station who travelled to the small town outside Austin where the murder happened to provide that ‘on the spot’ illusion for the five o’clock story.
The little town hosting the murder is a rural haven left over from when the railroad first came through that part of Texas, though a few Austinites have moved to Red Rock to fulfill dreams of pastoral peace and to ride their bike instead of burning fossil fuels like the lesser forms of humanity. But, mostly Red Rock is a ranching and agricultural enclave. Our lively television reporter arrives in Red Rock ready to take the pulse of the townspeople.
Most of the town’s residents were busy with target practice, baking pies, and herding longhorns, but our reporter did find one unoccupied Red Rock resident who happened to be one of the Austin-transplants, a spry fellow riding his bike. Somehow the reporter didn’t notice that Red Rock regular residents don’t ride ten-speeds and they certainly don’t wear flashy bicycle pants and bodysuit tops…or red and green banana helmets or earrings, or scraggly beards.
Our reporter has the camera going and needed just the one clip to go with his story of the murder. Thus, his brief interview of the guy in bicycle shorts (GIBS) would come and go in his life without causing undo harm. The guy in the bicycle shorts, I fear, was not so lucky.
Because, you see, when the reporter asked the GIBS, “Do you find it hard to believe that a murder like this could happen in such a pleasant little town?”
The grinning GIBS looks right into the camera and says, “Not really. This town is full of POT-BELLIED, KNUCKLE-DRAGGING REDNECKS.”
Did I mention he LIVED in amongst the people he just so colorfully described? Or, at least he did.
