I love Austin, but the infrastructure here is screwed up. This city is not built to support the number of people that live in it. Much to the chagrin of my friends I complain about this often, but this afternoon I feel a little vindicated.

A man pulled a gun on himself in a park near a highways (Mopac, also known as Hwy 1) which forced law enforcement to shut down part of that highway, and the ensuing traffic practically shut down the entire city. One friend drove an hour to get 6 blocks across downtown. Last I heard he’s still sitting there.

I shudder to imagine what would happen if there was a real emergency. Like a natural disaster, or a threat… like terrorism, or an attack by a prehistoric monster that freed itself from the bonds placed upon it deep inside the rock of the hill country.

We’d all be fucked.

It would be like the movie Cloverfield, except two hours shorter, because it would just be gridlock, and then gobbled by monsters.

I’m beginning to suspect that old people hide the secrets of oldness, possibly so as to not scare children out of aging. They only reveal the downsides well after you have past the opportunity to make other choices as regards the process of aging. Up until it’s too late they regale you only with stories about going out when you want too, staying up late, and getting to drive.

I just found out that as you grow older your skin apparently grows thinner. The concept that the fabric my organs have clothed themselves in can become threadbare is so foreign, the possibility so outside of anything I’ve ever considered, that I find it wholly frightening.

This is something someone should have mentioned before, damn it. I definitely would have made other choices had I some notice. I might have been a little more cautious with it, a little less reckless with how I let it wear through, or the places that I carelessly ripped holes, or even who I let patch it (definitely a more serious skinstress than my mother).

Now all I can do is add it to the list of things old people never thought to mention. Below random spots, but well above strange smells and unreasonably located hair. I’m thinking right in the middle… somewheres around the many horrors of sagging.