This Alphabytes entry was brought to you by the letter “B” and a self-important bee-yotch in a fancy-schmantsy SUV.
I had an unusual lunch break today. I got into a shouting match with a total stranger.
I had to go to the library and return a couple of books I was done reading and renew a couple of others that I wasn’t done reading, so I went and did this. While I was there, I rummaged around a little, as one does, found some other stuff I wanted to read, and realized, “damn, that half-hour lunch break sure passes by quickly!” So I checked out my new stuff and scurried on back to work. On my way, I have to cross five different intersections, all of which have pedestrian lights. On one of these crossings, I was toodling across the street at a forced-march pace, keeping my eye on the wee blue man on the crosswalk light, ready to dart into a dash the moment he turned red and blinky.
Apparently, however, my brisk stride wasn’t sufficient for Madame Important-Woman In the Silver-Blue Ford Explorer, who cramped a hard, fast right turn and damn near mowed me over. As the large, black-plastic grille bore down on me, I let out a yawp of terror, a stream of expletive, and tried to leap out of the way, whereupon the zipper of my backpack broke, I dropped two of my books, and had to stop, right there in the middle of the street, in front of the Ford Explorer of Death, and retrieve them. This further delay enraged Madame Pissyass even more, so she laid on the horn and gave me this constipated look of Very Important Inconvenience. I straightened up with my armload of books shuffled to under my left arm, and brought a good whack down on her hood with my right hand. Left no marks, ‘cept possibly a sweaty palm print, but made a good “thung” noise, and I shouted, “Just chill, would ya?”
Well.
She rolled down all four of her windows, the better I should hear every whiny, venomous, slanderous, unfair, idiotic, and frankly idiotic word she intended to send my way.
According to Madame SUVilla De-Ville, I am:
1. a panhandler
2. a vandal
3. crazy
4. rude
5. probably high on some drugs
6. inconsiderate
7. violent
8. lucky she didn’t call the cops and have me arrested.
I yelled back at her that it would have done her truck more damage if she had actually hit me than the little whack I had delivered it, and that if she had creamed me, I could at least have sued her for medical expenses.
She flipped me the bird, fiddled with her cell-phone ostentatiously, and roared off in her SUV in a Great Big Huff.
I got back from my lunchbreak late, angry, and with a busted backpack. I had to cobble it together with safetypins and packing-tape to get back home.
That prune-faced princess in the expensive truck is damn lucky I haven’t invented that “throwing-brick holster” I keep daydreaming about.