My dad- the assassin?

As regular readers of this blog are aware, my dad spent his formative years living in Ukraine after emigrating from the United States when he was a small boy, due to his mother's health condition.
My dad was what you would either call a real Ukrainian patriot, or a terrorist, depending upon your viewpoint.

When he lived in Ukraine, it was ruled by Poland as it had been by then, for centuries. A Polish "overseer" was assigned to his small village. My dad rebelled against all things Polish, mostly in ways that were symbolic or relatively safe. He was unafraid to assert his patriotic fervor for Ukraine and everyone in the village new that this young man was a zealot. When something happened in the village that was a slight against the Polish authorities, everyone assumed my dad was behind it. Usually, he was.

My dad unfortunately decided to take things to a whole new level when he was about 17. He hated the Polish overseer assigned to his village and my dad and a friend of his hatched an assassination plot! Their target routinely walked down the same path every evening, by himself. The plan was simple. My dad and his friend would lie in ambush , hiding along the path, with a handgun. When their target passed by, they would jump out and shoot him dead.

I can only imagine the adrenaline pumping through my dad's body as he and his co-conspirator laid in wait for their target to approach. They waited patiently until darkness fell and they realized that on this night, their intended target was not going to follow his usual routine.

By the next morning, my dad explained to me that his "fever" to commit this terrible act had somehow dissipated, never to return again. He must have realized that he would be the number one suspect if he had been successful and that he would certainly would have paid for this act with his life.

If he had been successful that fateful day, you would not be reading this story.

What Is Wrong With People?

The other day I was backing out my car in the parking lot of my favorite bagel joint.

I must say that I backed out rather fast and obviously without looking too carefully, as I heard the sickening thud of hitting another car that was parked in the lot. Totally my fault.

I put the car in park and jumped out and a woman a little older than myself who owned the car, got out of her car. She was already in what I would call a "crazed state".

I inspected both cars for damage and found a paint scratch on the bumper on her car and no damage to mine. But if you would have heard this lady rant and rave, you would have thought I just killed her whole family! Here's a partial list of her one liners...the first one was repeated several times.

"What were you thinking? "

"I said, this guy's gonna hit my car! "

"This is our retirement car! "

"Why did you do it? "
"If you think I'm mad, wait till I call my husband and tell him" (a line that made me shudder)
"What are we gonna do?"
I told her that I was a moron (seriously)and made a mistake by misjudging the distance between our cars. Nothing I said could calm her down. At about this point a passerby said to us: "Is everything okay? Should I call the police?'  No, I thought, you should call a doctor and get her a Valium.

I told her we could exchange insurance info if she wanted, but I said there's almost no damage to your car. She then just asked me for my phone number and commented on how I could just give her a phony name and number. To that rant, I showed her my license and said if I'm lying to you, call then police on me and have me arrested.

She made me feel like a low life criminal who had just stolen money from a blind person.

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably 15 minutes, we both drove off. Her husband did call me and said he had tried to buff out the scratch but to no avail. He said he would get it repaired and send me the bill. I then said let's just report this to our insurance companies and we exchanged information. I told him I was sorry his wife had gotten so upset over the accident. He had no comment. Imagine what his days are like.