Teasing the tiger

An elderly woman’s cigarette strays too close to the flexible plastic hose feeding oxygen into her lungs. A flash, a flare, and her home goes up in smoke.

Tempting fate. Teasing the tiger.

Her credit cards were declined. The gauge on her bank account hovers relentlessly over zero. With no job, no prospects of one and unemployment running out, she has no business trying on $300 boots. “I’ll take them,” she decides, “You take checks, right?”

Tempting fate. Teasing the tiger.

She cradles her tender, swollen cheek with one hand while the other punctuates her words. He’s lazy. Filthy. Good-for-nothing. Ignores his narrowing eyes, the hammer clenched and drawn back to strike.

Tempting fate. Teasing the tiger.

Why can’t we resist teasing the tiger? Is it because our outraged sensibilities insist that this sort of thing only happens to other people? Or because we know it only happens to us, and so we hasten the plunge, hoping to get it over with, to find the sunshine on the other side?

I’m sitting here, browsing through the local news, wondering what the hell is happening to us. There seems to be a run on angry tigers, and the queue to whisker-tweak grows long and longer. Some snake oil salesman told us the laws of common sense no longer apply, and it looks like we believed him.

Despite the economy, contributions were climbing: $11,000 and more coming in. No one expected that much and it was all thanks to her hard work. Christmas is coming, the kids need so much, and by the time anyone notices she’ll have it all paid back…

Tempting fate. Teasing the tiger.

Sigh.

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