Successful, sappy woman gives good advice.

Originally this was to be titled Which one is the idiot?: The girl bombing mountain hills at night, dressed in black, or the person believing angels kept that girl safe?

Last night I was driving on the winding mountain road by my house and a girl/young woman came sailing down the middle of the road – dressed all in dark colors – on a skateboard. She had no lights or reflectors. I could so easily have hit her. It was only by her angels watching over her that I didn’t. I thought, what an idiot.

Please, please. Let’s not get into a religion debate here. Instead let’s band together to to make fun of Tara Taylor Quinn because she writes Harlequin Romances and had the poor fortune to write about skateboarding on a blog titled Story Broads (get it?).

Actually, the point she tries to make is that we shouldn’t judge someone because they ride a board down a hill. That’s sweet. Skateboarders have received poor treatment in the past. Our feelings have been hurt, it’s true. This spirit of kindness can not prevent me from overlooking that if your blog is comprised of 6 award winning authors with 240 books between them, perhaps you could afford to hire a high school kid to give you a decent looking web page.

Last night I was driving on the winding mountain road by my house and a girl/young woman came sailing down the middle of the road – dressed all in dark colors – on a skateboard. She had no lights or reflectors. I could so easily have hit her. It was only by her angels watching over her that I didn’t. I thought, what an idiot. I started on a mind journey denigrating the girl for her stupidity. And then, outloud, I said, I’m sure she has a good heart. But it took me conscious thought to get there. Yet is was so easy to start mentally beating her up for her stupidity. I hear other people do this kind of ‘cutting down’ people all the time. Why??? Why do we do this? We’re all basically good, right? We band together when our nation is attacked, we give to charity and help at the polls, we write books about love and hope and forgiveness, we rally when someone is sick or needs items for auctions for a cause. We care when someone is hurt. Yet, how many times a day do we, either mentally or, worse, verbally, attack those very same people for something as innocent as speaking the truth? Or riding a board down a hill?

Today I am challenging myself – and anyone else who got this far with me – to be who we basically are – good. Kind. I’m going to look at every girl coming down the road in the dark as someone with a good heart – and then learn from her actions that I don’t ever want to ride a skateboard down a dark mountain road in the dark with dark clothes on. I’m going to assume that she doesn’t mean to offend anyone with her actions. I’m going to think about how open and free her heart must feel as she sails down that road – and maybe wonder what’s going on her life that she chose to do something not quite safe in order to get the feeling of freedom and joy.