
I find that walking my twin girls in my stroller everyday, with my Sangean DT-400 and earbuds, for an hour or so, I meet a lot of well-wishing people, who assume a certain sweetness about myself since fatherhood suggests, among other things, cheerful benevolence, an important trait for fatherhood.
Let's just say I failed to maintain this image a few days ago. I was listening to KPCC's Larry Mantle talk to an LA Times reporter about the possible demise of Los Angeles' public TV station KCET (donations down, cost of PBS programming way up), when a lady caller, whose crackling voice made her sound like she was in her 80s, claimed that KCET was the only TV station she watched. I thought that this was precisely KCET's problem, a dying audience, and I spoke out loud in a loud voice, "Yeah, but you're super old, dead, part of a dying generation."
I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw an old man standing with his boxer by his front yard. The man's jaw had dropped and his gray eye brows wilted. It was clear he had assumed my vociferous rant was directed toward him. Of course, it was not. I was talking to myself while listening to the radio, but I knew that the old man thought I had railed into him.
It was too late for me to explain. I just kept walking, knowing my baby-walking stagecraft had failed miserably.
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