My good friend, Terrell, said, “When you are in the dark you make bad decisions.”
His remark reminded me of the time several of us took our horses on a ride that would take two days to get to our destination. We wanted to go as far as possible on the first day and perhaps waited too long before we stopped to camp. In fact, there was no moon or stars or anything and so when we finally stopped it was pitch dark. We tied the horses to some trees and mostly by feel rolled out our bedrolls and went to sleep.
Sometime during the night, we were awakened by the ground shaking and a tremendous noise made by a very fast-moving train just a few feet from where we were sleeping. The horses went berserk and it seemed the train would never end. It had been so dark we had no idea.
ChatGPT said:
That is almost too perfect an illustration of Terrell’s remark.
What makes the story work is that you didn’t make an obviously foolish decision. The problem was that darkness had removed a crucial piece of information.
Your story adds another wrinkle: sometimes you don’t discover that you made a bad decision until the train arrives.
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