Consider the tragic story of Mahdi Halane, a young Surrey man with so much promise until he was shot through his neck.
Rendered paralyzed, he could not move anything other than his head for the remaining six years of his life, before he died of kidney failure at age 24.
The BC Coroners Service ruled his death a homicide and those responsible for his murder have yet to be brought to justice, if you could call it that considering what they'd done to him.
Madhi was only 18 when he was shot. He was not a gangster or a drug dealer, nor did he fit into any other category of assorted criminal.
Why was he shot? Indirectly, he had fallen victim to a random spitting.
That's right. Somebody spat on somebody else's pant leg, tempers got psycho for it, and bullets flew.
It certainly makes you think.
How many times have you witnessed - or had a member of your family return home with a story about - a man going berserk over a parking spot, a woman freaking out on a store clerk, or a roidmonkey smashing another man down to a dusty bar floor for accidentally stepping on his foot?
Let's not forget all those baby boys inside grown men's bodies who blow a head vein every time they venture out into traffic. He's a subspecies unto himself. Not Neanderthal, but similar. Let's call him Apoplectic Man.
We've all heard these kinds of stories. Of course, not all end in shootings and paralysis but they're crazy enough that it doesn't require significant mental acrobatics to imagine them ending that way.
So, for those so-called normal people among us who are inclined to "just lose it" over trivial happenstance, give a serious thought to poor Mahdi and his family, and the indescribable suffering endured, after somebody spat on somebody else and cooler heads did not prevail.
The Now