Osler's Razor

Last night about 10:30, someone shot out the windows in my car. As often happens in situations like that, a crowd of neighbors gathered in the street, the police arrived, and we all fussed over how this happened. It either was just pretty dumb (if it was random) or really scary (if it was directed at me personally), but mostly I was fascinated by the glass itself. It didn't shatter, but rather broke into a bunch of little pebbles. In fact, even the window that was hit three times was still mostly in place, but simply fractured into a thousand pieces held in place by the bow of the window.

I knew before how safety glass works, but had never really touched it, held it. It was so much like the ice that we loved to play with as kids in Michigan after a cold night-- the top of puddles would have a half-inch of shiny ice, and if you sunk a heel into it, the ice would make a wonderful squeeking-cracking noise and break into those pebble-pieces, which we would pick up and examine or throw at one another. It was pretty amazing that temperature could make something so average, a puddle, into something with such amazing new physical properties.

Probably I should have been out there with the neighbors raging against crime, but I do that professionally, and know this is not such a big deal. My mind turned to the past in part because tomorrow I will be somewhere I haven't been since 1992, a trip that will be sad and important and hard.