![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A blast from the past
May. 21st, 2004 01:16 pm"Urgle."
I let my head fall forward until with an audible CRACK it was stopped by the steering wheel. I raised my head, then my hands, to the heavens, and wanted to know why the traffic gods had chosen this particular Thursday to fuck with me.
It was late August, 1998. I was sitting on I-75 southbound in Marietta. I'd just gotten off work and rolled onto the interstate to note the undelightsome sight of a sea of metal ahead of me. Screened from view of most lanes by an 18-wheeler, I'd managed to tuck my Escort behind a fast-moving Corvette who looked like he had discovered clear sailing ahead, but an instant later was rudely proven wrong as the Vette stood on its nose trying to avoid a rear-end collision with the entirely stopped lane of traffic. I had stomped on my own brakes and slid to a halt behind him, shaking my head.
Twenty minutes later, during which we moved approximately three feet, I had already gone through my usual bitchings about my dead A/C, rolled down the window, and attempted to get some kind of tepid airflow with the fan. Deciding that whatever-it-was up ahead probably wasn't going to clear anytime soon, I killed the engine and cranked the stereo up with some 80s Christian metal from Barren Cross.
Some time later, a shout from the car in the lane next to me cut through my headbanging reverie. "Hey! Fella! Can I talk to you for a second?"
Feeling charitable, I dropped the volume from earthshaking down to a more sensible dull roar. "Something I can do for you?"
He looked nonplused, but pressed on anyway. "What's with the fish on your trunk?"
"The fish on my....? Oh, the Darwinfish." (I loved the DarwinFish that were showing up around that time and had plastered one on my own trunk, to proclaim my own belief in evolution over creationism). "It's, well, it's like a symbol for evolution, is all."
The guy nodded his head excitedly. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Did you know that Darwin recanted his beliefs and found God in his final days?"
The pleased grin at finding a fellow evolutionist dropped off my face like a Mafia wiseguy fitted with cement shoes. Whoops. Not an evolutionist -- an evangelist. And he wants to convert me. Wonderful. I shook my head ("found God"? What, did they lose him between the sofa cushions or something?), but decided to give it a shot anyway: "Well, I know that that's what Lady Hope claimed after visiting him on his deathbed, but I also know that Darwin's daughter who was also present, promptly refuted Lady Elizabeth's claims and said her father never changed his mind about any of his scientific views -- then, or earlier."
The guy opened his mouth and I overrode him. "Besides, I don't see what difference it makes even if he had changed his mind about what he believed. The scientific advances he'd made have since been borne out and demonstrated repeatedly to be true....so he was right even if he did change his mind. It doesn't invalidate his discoveries."
"No, see, that's where you're wrong," the guy insisted, his voice starting to get more strident as he began to explain why Darwin's much-argued and much-rumored deathbed conversion quite clearly showed that God would "prevail" over the detailed scientific investigation and well-reasoned logic that were the basis for the theories of evolution. As the arguments grew more faulty and the leaps of imagination more wild with every passing second, I was struck by the absurdity of the situation. Here I was, stopped dead on an interstate where cars should be moving at 80 mph, listening to an evangelist trying to convert me, an atheist who's playing Christian metal on his stereo.
This was just too much. I began laughing helplessly. As my would-be evangelist went red with rage and began shouting about how I was hellbound if I didn't listen to him, I heard a blaring horn behind me and looked up to realize that the gridlock was broken and traffic was moving again. Still laughing, I keyed the engine and positively leapt forward off the line, leaving my antagonist fuming behind me with a last look at the DarwinFish still proudly displayed on my trunk.
Yeah, I thought, absently cranking the Barren Cross up again and singing along lustily with "Out of Time". I attract the weirdos too, sometimes.
-- END OF LINE --
Currently playing: Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos -- Chant II. Pretty media-savvy, these monks, but no less talented musically for all that. Beautiful album of Gregorian chants.
I let my head fall forward until with an audible CRACK it was stopped by the steering wheel. I raised my head, then my hands, to the heavens, and wanted to know why the traffic gods had chosen this particular Thursday to fuck with me.
It was late August, 1998. I was sitting on I-75 southbound in Marietta. I'd just gotten off work and rolled onto the interstate to note the undelightsome sight of a sea of metal ahead of me. Screened from view of most lanes by an 18-wheeler, I'd managed to tuck my Escort behind a fast-moving Corvette who looked like he had discovered clear sailing ahead, but an instant later was rudely proven wrong as the Vette stood on its nose trying to avoid a rear-end collision with the entirely stopped lane of traffic. I had stomped on my own brakes and slid to a halt behind him, shaking my head.
Twenty minutes later, during which we moved approximately three feet, I had already gone through my usual bitchings about my dead A/C, rolled down the window, and attempted to get some kind of tepid airflow with the fan. Deciding that whatever-it-was up ahead probably wasn't going to clear anytime soon, I killed the engine and cranked the stereo up with some 80s Christian metal from Barren Cross.
Some time later, a shout from the car in the lane next to me cut through my headbanging reverie. "Hey! Fella! Can I talk to you for a second?"
Feeling charitable, I dropped the volume from earthshaking down to a more sensible dull roar. "Something I can do for you?"
He looked nonplused, but pressed on anyway. "What's with the fish on your trunk?"
"The fish on my....? Oh, the Darwinfish." (I loved the DarwinFish that were showing up around that time and had plastered one on my own trunk, to proclaim my own belief in evolution over creationism). "It's, well, it's like a symbol for evolution, is all."
The guy nodded his head excitedly. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Did you know that Darwin recanted his beliefs and found God in his final days?"
The pleased grin at finding a fellow evolutionist dropped off my face like a Mafia wiseguy fitted with cement shoes. Whoops. Not an evolutionist -- an evangelist. And he wants to convert me. Wonderful. I shook my head ("found God"? What, did they lose him between the sofa cushions or something?), but decided to give it a shot anyway: "Well, I know that that's what Lady Hope claimed after visiting him on his deathbed, but I also know that Darwin's daughter who was also present, promptly refuted Lady Elizabeth's claims and said her father never changed his mind about any of his scientific views -- then, or earlier."
The guy opened his mouth and I overrode him. "Besides, I don't see what difference it makes even if he had changed his mind about what he believed. The scientific advances he'd made have since been borne out and demonstrated repeatedly to be true....so he was right even if he did change his mind. It doesn't invalidate his discoveries."
"No, see, that's where you're wrong," the guy insisted, his voice starting to get more strident as he began to explain why Darwin's much-argued and much-rumored deathbed conversion quite clearly showed that God would "prevail" over the detailed scientific investigation and well-reasoned logic that were the basis for the theories of evolution. As the arguments grew more faulty and the leaps of imagination more wild with every passing second, I was struck by the absurdity of the situation. Here I was, stopped dead on an interstate where cars should be moving at 80 mph, listening to an evangelist trying to convert me, an atheist who's playing Christian metal on his stereo.
This was just too much. I began laughing helplessly. As my would-be evangelist went red with rage and began shouting about how I was hellbound if I didn't listen to him, I heard a blaring horn behind me and looked up to realize that the gridlock was broken and traffic was moving again. Still laughing, I keyed the engine and positively leapt forward off the line, leaving my antagonist fuming behind me with a last look at the DarwinFish still proudly displayed on my trunk.
Yeah, I thought, absently cranking the Barren Cross up again and singing along lustily with "Out of Time". I attract the weirdos too, sometimes.
-- END OF LINE --
Currently playing: Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos -- Chant II. Pretty media-savvy, these monks, but no less talented musically for all that. Beautiful album of Gregorian chants.