I find that I must write an addendum to that piece in the wake of two high school cheerleaders getting shot on Tuesday night outside Austin, Texas after one of them accidentally opened the door of the wrong car in a supermarket parking lot by mistake.
Yes, I also once opened wrong car door. It happened in late 1991. This would have been few months after I left Thunder Bay to attend Carleton University in Ottawa. I lived in residence during my freshman year. One Sunday afternoon, I was going to visit family in nearby Nepean and was waiting to be picked up by my Uncle John.
I opened the car door, get inside the passenger seat and start talking to Uncle John only to realize it is not my Uncle John. It was the father of one of the freshmen who lived across the hall from me. As with later incidents in going to the wrong address, I profusely apologized and all concerned had a good laugh about it.
Doing such a thing in this day and age, particularly in this country, could have cost me my life or at the very least resulted in some grievous harm. We make honest mistakes without the intent of causing harm to anyone. But there are people who view honest mistakes as declarations of war and when armed are prepared to respond with deadly force despite having no justification.
In the grand scheme of things, the chances of being harmed going into the wrong address or the wrong car are small, but it is yet one more thing we must think about in a country where we are already balancing precipitously on pins and needles.
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