When you yell something out of your mouth that you had no intention of saying, what is that a sign of? Senility? Dementia? Or maybe I have late-onset Tourette syndrome? What is happening, I honestly don't know. But twice today, while biking around the lake, my brain and mouth refused to cooperate.

I was going pretty fast, and there was a family of four monopolizing the bike path in front of me. Two parents and two children, but only one bike. I'm not sure what the plan was, maybe they were going to take turns? Who knows, but they didn't need to be figuring it out right in the middle of the path. One child was even sitting down, like maybe they'd been there a while, and the other child was attempting to get on their one bike. My mind took all this in, moments before realizing I was going to mow them all down with my bike, like bowling pins, if they didn't move or if I didn't swerve onto the grass.

Usually I would yell "On your left! to announce that I was passing, but since these people were monopolizing the entire path, "On your left!" wouldn't be a very accurate thing to yell, it would only apply to one of them. If I blew through the middle of their little family bicycle drama, I'd actually be on the right of the dad and the two kids. I guess this was too much for my little brain to process and perhaps my thoughts got bottlenecked in my throat, because what ended up happening is about the time I reached the family, I turned and yelled at the top of my lungs, right into the Mother's ear, "ALEXA!"

She screamed and jumped back as I sped past, clearly startled, but she couldn't have been as startled as I was, WTF? Why did I just scream "Alexa!" at this poor woman? Maybe I was going to say something like, "Alexa, turn off these people?" I thought about this for a good 30 minutes afterwards, but eventually my thoughts wandered, and I started thinking about other things.

And that's when I did it again. Yes, the exact same thing. But this time, to a new pair of joggers I just wanted to pass, normally, on the left. But they'd never know that, would they? Because I just yelled "ALEXA!" at them again as I sped past.

So disturbing.

And I do want to just mention here that I do in fact own an Alexa Echo, and it controls all of my lights; so there is at least some precedent for me yelling out this word. But never on the bike trail. Ugh.

Addendum: Full disclosure, I have inadvertently done this two more times since I originally wrote this, maybe I should talk to someone professionally?

"Alexa, look up therapists near me."

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Read more about getting older HERE.