The other night I went out on sort of a pub crawl with a few friends, and I was the designated driver. All was going well in my humble opinion until we got to the third stop, which was a place close to home and not too divey divey.
We sat down next to a few other people and exchanged pleasantries. Pretty soon we were are all talking about COVID-19 and whether or not the government was doing enough to prepare the citizenry and whether or not the media was blowing the situation out of proportion, and so on.
To cut to the chase, somehow that conversation morphed into a heated exchange between me and the guy sitting to my left over, of all things, whether or not the government should provide every U.S. citizen with a home.
It morphed into a heated exchange about that topic simply because the guy sitting to the left of me blurted out, "The housing situation in this city is crazy, I make a good living and I can't afford to buy a house here! The government should be providing homes for people!".
I was stunned to hear that, to say the least. It took me a few seconds to collect my thoughts but finally I replied, "Are you serious?'
To which the gentleman to my left, in a loud voice full of self-righteousness, retorted, "Yes I'm serious! There is no reason I shouldn't be able to have a house where I want to live - the prices of homes in this city are too high for the average person to be able to afford a house, the government should step in and make houses affordable for everyone!"
Looking and listening to him I could see he was getting much to agitated over this issue than what anyone would think was reasonable, but I couldn't help myself, I had to say it, and say it I did...I said, "That's insane. The government does not owe you a house in whatever area of the country you wish to settle in. What, should I be entitled to a house on the beach in Malibu because I want to settle there?
Which was not the thing this guy wanted to hear...for he then preceded to rant about how Capitalism is evil and Socialism is the only government that allows all people to live equally...yada, yada, yada.
Of course I couldn't just sit there and quietly listen to this malarky, so I started in with a counter-argument at the top of my voice, and pretty soon we were yelling at each other like two complete lunatics.
And then...we both suddenly realized what we were doing (and that the whole bar was staring at us) and stopped. Just stopped.
We looked at each other and almost simultaneously held out our hands to shake, and mumbled apologies for getting much too heated.
Everybody around us looked stunned, as I am 100% certain that they were not expecting anything even remotely like that to happen.
But it did, and me and the guy continued talking about the subject (in much, much calmer tones) for another half hour or so, until my companions voted that it was time to continue on to the next joint.
Heck, me and the guy that was sitting to the left even gave each other a hug as we parted ways.
That right there is one of the best things about getting old...eventually, calmer heads do prevail.
No comments:
Post a Comment