Please stop doing nice things so I can judge you properly.

I haven't been to the gym in months yet somehow, my triceps are looking pretty darn good, I just gotta say. I'd like to think it's from my efforts at marginal parenting, hoisting up my little guy onto my shoulders during countless neighborhood strolls, not because it adds to the bonding experience but because I can only take so much incessant ​stop-and-go from a two-year-old's non-existent attention span where every single pebble and crumb of dirt requires detailed scrutiny usually reserved only for CSI crime scenes.

Nope, parenting isn't my workout secret. My triceps look like chiseled cheddar because I - like at least two or three other people on this planet, I'm sure​ - love to climb up onto my polished soapbox several times a day, chin and nose up, proclaiming proudly that I, lover of all and self-declared patron Saint of the Modern Method, do not judge.

​Well that's just a hefty load of farm animal quality shit, you might say. And my response to that is...

​You're absolutely right. Go get a shovel.

​Now, I like to think I don't participate in hurtful gossip, local or Hollywood. And, for the most part, it's true. What people in my community do is their business, not mine, and I certainly don't give a flying squirrel to the goings-on of notable celebrities. That is, unless said celebrities are regurgitating irrelevant facts on international TV they memorized from a brochure they picked up in their hotel lobby which, thanks to the virality of all things digital these days (except for my blog, it seems. Hmm...) then becomes gospel for a multitude of meandering morons who aren't bright enough to make opinions for themselves.

​I digress. My point is that I try​ not to judge others, to criticize them for their words or actions until I have good reason to. When people talk animatedly among themselves with strong viewpoints about whatever​, I'll usually just keep quiet, choosing to listen rather than spout rhetoric about something I don't fully understand (though my girly-sized foot just might actually fit in my mouth, I'd rather not find out in public if I can help it.) So I try to give people a chance before I label them an idiot, a jerk, or a complete waste of oxygen and water.

​Now, I live in a tiny little town, fa-a-a-r north of anywhere sensible, and so I've become accustomed to the people who share the community and their various ways of life. It is a small group of people, but we are all in it for the same reasons (work, life, moose), and everyone kinda looks out for one-another. There is a definite sense of community there, one that I wouldn't really expect to find easily in a big city. You know, one with traffic lights and everything.

​A the time of this writing, my wife and I (the kid is here too, somewhere. I think.) are visiting friends and family near the southern curve of the country, more or less, in the Calgary area. We're plodding our way around a couple big metropolitan centres throughout our voyage since leaving home and, though the local drivers haven't yet banded together to have my small-town driving methods banned from their streets, I feel a bit out of place putzing along at a relaxed "ambling" kind of pace when the preferred speed is clearly something more akin to "apocalypse".

​More than anything, though, are the weirdos​ that inhabit large city centres. Whoops. Okay, that was uncalled for. What I mean is people are different ​out here. Downtown pedestrians sway their heads side to side, up and down, seemingly mumbling to ​nobody​ around them. Some drivers are gripping their steering wheel like it owes them money, hunched over them with their faces nearly pressed into the windshield as they drive. Others are seated so low that all you see are the tops of their heads and knuckles on the wheel, the only explanation being that someone stole their driver's seat and they are now using some sort of spiritual GPS to navigate their way around, totally unbound by the traditional requirement of sight ​to operate a vehicle. Point is, they're weird.

​Again, I don't mean to be prejudiced against people before I have any concrete reason to do so. After all, a friend is just a stranger you haven't met, right? But sometimes you just can't help it. Someone wears a bright neon scarf in beautiful, twenty-five degree weather with mitts to boot and leading a chicken on a leash, you can't help but automatically think ​The heck is wrong with that moon-fruit? I'd better cross the street to be safe.

Take this pickup truck my wife and I sneered at yesterday, driven by what was certainly​ ​an exemplary citizen, I'm sure (heavy on the sarcasm, in case this font-type didn't convey that). Mid-twenties white male, wife-beater shirt, truck was an old domestic P.O.S. with a raised rear-end, matt black paint job, oversized tires. There were two other guys in the cramped cab with him, all three of them wearing caps tilted to one side, surely on their way to audition as expendable extras for a Kid Rock music video.

​Everything about these guys screamed "douchebag" and my wife and I exchanged knowing looks as they roared passed. ​Enough said.​ We were profiling, we both new it, but it was also blatantly obvious to anyone else with a pulse, it was certain.

​With impeccable timing against karma from the universe, I opened my mouth and said sarcastically to my loving wife "I can't wait to have a daughter so she can marry that guy. Mullet, nice friends, acquitted of all charges! He's got promise, I tell ya!"

​No sooner had the words left my lips that I witnessed a perfect lane change by the young punk driving that black pickup. It really was perfect. Pre-emptive signalling to display his intention (​three full flashes), followed by a solid shoulder check, then a smoooooth​ transition to the next lane over, signal light flashing diligently the entire​ time, with only a single extra flash of the indicator once he was in the desired lane, then off. It was beautiful. And if you live in a large city, I'm sure you can attest how that is a rare sighting indeed.

"Okay, fine," I correct myself to my wife. "He gets one point for a nice lane change, Universe. I'll give him that much. But still,"​ I sneered in the young man's direction, bent on profiling him for no good reason.

​Following traffic, we tailed this guy for just another quick mile when all of a sudden, the truck peels off to the side of the road, onto the left shoulder, billowing up a heavy cloud of dust as it came to a quick stop in the dry dirt.

​"The hell..." I mutter to myself. "What's that jackass doing?" I instinctively assumed this driver and his band of idiots were trying to find cheap thrills with some illicit inner-city off-roading, a complete disregard for norms and rules of a functioning society. Approaching a red traffic light, we slowed down along with the rest of traffic bound for the city limits, giving us ample time to glare at the shmucks who, just seconds before, hurriedly veered off the roadway. What we saw shut me up real quick, I'll tell you.

​The three guys from the pickup practically jumped out of their vehicle, crossed traffic attentively, and rushed over to help another motorist who had, just moments before, broke down in a busy and dangerous area, on a slight hill, no less. The hapless driver was futilely trying to push his car and steer it up the gentle slope to get out of the way of incessant traffic, but it was too much for one guy. The three "douchebags" whom I had so callously labeled had leaped to this man's rescue, the three of them pushing on the back of the downed car without delay, moving the man and his vehicle to a much safer area of the intersection. They had a brief exchange, hands were shaken, the three ​good Samaritans headed back to their truck.

​The light turned green, and we invariably moved forward with the traffic. In my rearview, I could see the pickup truck turn back onto it's original path, again with a courteous use of signal lights and conscientious merging techniques. Was I humbled? You bet I was. I was busy pre-judging these guys while they went out of their way to help out a fellow man whom I didn't even notice was having trouble.

​I'd like to promise that I won't be prejudiced against anyone ever again, but I know that won't happen. If someone is walking around with a lemur on his head while bopping along to some Elton John tunes and wearing gold-fish platforms, rest assured it will be beyond my control to not make a comment of some kind.

But I do believe people are generally good, and most are just looking for an opportunity to prove just that. I think we could all spend just a bit​ less time on our soapboxes, instead spending the time looking for ways to help one another. I'll give you one last opportunity to judge me​ for having judged someone else, but that's it​. Go ahead, I deserve it.

​All done? Great. Now, who wants to go for a drive?

​Mezzer