Thanks For Showing Me The Light

I've talked before about how in most men's minds they are constantly starring in their own personal action movie and making mundane tasks into mind-blowing action sequences. Any time we are slowing walking down a crowded ramp or stairs and there is a railing off to one side every guy has visions of grabbing that railing, leaping over and taking off running in an effort to chase down some hoodlum who is trying to run away rather than provide valuable information that could potentially crack this huge case and shake City Hall to its foundation. And in our minds, we will look incredibly bad-ass doing it.

Then, as I was picking my dad up from the train this afternoon, one of the guys who got off the train ahead of him actually acted out his inner action-star moment. He walked off the train and jumped over the railing, trying to cut everyone off and get to his car first. At first glance it was a pretty impressive leap because this guy was not tiny. But a second glance revealed that he was in his late, late 20s which is far too old to be jumping over railings. Also, he was wearing nice enough clothes that I assume he has a real job. What would the people at work think, Jeremy? (I have no idea if that was his name, but I feel like he looked like a Jeremy.) If you jumped over a railing at work you would immediately be the weird guy in the office. Not to mention the guy did all that and then didn't even beat the train to the crossing lights, meaning he just ended up standing with everyone else, only now they were all looking at him wondering why he felt he needed to jump over the railing and what the big hurry was.

It was in that moment the action-star bubble popped for me. After the age of about 14, you should leave that kind of stuff alone. You don't look bad-ass acting out your internal action movie fantasy, you just look like a weirdo. People don't think you're in the middle of a cool chase scene, they just think you're an idiot who should be on some impulse-controlling medication. You're an adult and part of being an adult means you have to take the extra five seconds required to walk to the bottom of the ramp in a slow-moving crowd. So thank you, man-I-randomly-named-Jeremy, for showing me that I should never, ever try that move in real life unless I wander onto an action movie set.