Nerve Endings Firing Away

Three weeks ago, I had written a post about the debate over changes in local traffic and road designs in Northgate, College Station. The region in question is not more than block from where I work and in fact I have experienced the traffic problems that the changes seek to ameliorate. I had also cross posted it on my other blog (those who are aware of it will know) since it dealt directly with the subject that blog is based on. The person that I had quoted at the top of the email somehow found that post and contacted me via email. Thrice. Each time with a different sentiment/attitude.

The first email was confrontational. Accusing me of cut-pasting instead of doing “research”, he proceeded to explain his attitude regarding the sentence that I had not commented upon in the first place. Although he didn’t say so directly, I could see what he was trying to imply especially with the ‘type of people’ connotation. He proceeded to blame the local media for sensationalizing the aspect of the story that again, I had not commented upon. My entire post was based on his premise that public spaces causes fights which he did not address. This first email was sent at 5am.

The second email which followed 8 minutes later complimented on my site design and how he liked it except for the quotes he was so angry about in first email. Remember, those quotes were an excerpt from an article and not my words. He proceeded to ask what my major was and perhaps I was barely familiar with the town (I’ve lived here for 5 years now, out of which two in the area under discussion).

The third email came next evening and it seemed that he didn’t remember sending me the rants (checking the Outbox ought to be simple enough) and he profusely apologized for having vented his anger on me. Having ignored his previous two emails, I was finding this entire email thread hilarious and again, while not commenting on the nature of his business, I think he ought to have slept on it before shooting off emails to a total stranger who was in no manner responsible for either writing the story on him or maligning him. In fact, I had partly agreed with him but I guess he never got that far down in the post.

Don’t you love that you hear from the strangest people on the Internet and to be fair, I bet he was having one of those “Someone is wrong on the Internet” moments. I totally empathize with him and wish him all the luck in his quest of learning not to email random strangers on a Saturday night after entertaining a bar full of rowdy students.