Be Reasonable

After dinner, my phone rang. Cara was out on bail. She had spent less than ten hours in jail and was calling everyone she knew to complain about how unfairly she had been treated.

“Cara, you blew up a parking lot full of luxury cars easily worth a million dollars,” I pointed out. “And yet, you’re not calling me from jail. Don’t you think you ought to be grateful for that?” She didn’t. She got mad at me for not being mad she had been searched and put in a cell with ‘those people.’ Apparently her cellmates’ hair, nails, and grammar had not been up to Cara’s standards.

I tried to reason with her, but our conversation went nowhere.  She believed setting her husband’s car on fire was just a prank gone wrong.  “I should be charged with vandalism at most,” she said. “I’m not the one who parked those cars so close together.”

As we spoke, I shut my eyes and rubbed my temples. I pictured a vast concrete parking lot.  Trying to reason with Cara at that moment was like throwing grass seed onto the cement.  It was wearing me down and accomplishing nothing.

“Gotta go,” I said to Cara, ending the call. ‘Gotta protect my sanity and serenity,’ I thought.

Today I won’t kill my serenity trying to reason with unreasonable people.

Dogged Determination ©2018 by Ken Montrose

Dogged Determination is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and anyone you might know is purely coincidental.

Other works by Ken Montrose are available at: www.greenbriartraining.com https://www.pinterest.com/kenmontrose/mt-rose/