Originally posted on March 19, 2008
I'm standing
outside a popular restaurant that's connected to an even more popular mall. This
was a Friday night so the parking lot was jam-packed. In the area I'm standing,
there are only two lanes of traffic, each going the opposite way. I look over
and see this "tool" parked in the closet lane to me (his van's headlights are
facing me). He's just stopped there, like a complete idiot! People in cars
behind him had to jump in the opposite lane of traffic to get around him. Car
after car (and trucks) rolled the dice by bolting out blindly into the oncoming
traffic lane to get around this butt hole (and risk a head-on collision).
I look over at him and he's just happily sitting there without a care in the
world. I'm thinking, 'Is he kidding?!' Every so often a person would blow their
horn but there he sat, annoyingly oblivious. To make matters worse, every so
often he would glance at his rear and side views mirrors and see the chaos
behind him but there he sat. His van is sitting directly in front of another
restaurant, so I concluded that he was probably waiting for someone to come out.
He looks over at me, standing there in my cute, tight jeans and nightclub
make-up on. I give him the 'What the hell are you doing' look, complete
with the flailing arms. He looks puzzled. I yell to him, "Are you just going
to sit there?!" He turns his head sideways, like a confused dog as I repeat
myself even louder the next time. Undoubtedly, he can't hear me because all his
windows are rolled up and I'm about 30 or so feet away from him. I just look
down and nod my head in utter disgust at his blatantly inconsiderate behavior.
After a few more minutes, about 3 people come out of the restaurant he's parked
in front of, with several "to go" boxes. They all get in the van. Then,
unbelievably, this butt hole gets out of the drivers seat and opens the back
passenger side door and starts looking for something. He's actually standing
there, digging around as if he wasn't causing a complete traffic jam. By this
time, people a screaming from their cars and honking. He continues to slowly and
methodically dig in some bag in the back seat (while standing outside the
van). I couldn't believe it. He was either blissfully unaware of what a
headache he was causing or just plain didn't care or even worse, he was doing it
all on purpose. Then sis calls me. It occurs to me then that she is going to be
one of the people caught in the butt hole's handmade, parking lot traffic jam.
In true big sister fashion, I get really mad at the thought of her
behind him. I yell to the van again, this time filled with inconsiderate
passengers, "Are you just gonna stay there? People are trying to get around
you! Can't you see that?!" Then some old, life-beaten blonde chick screams
something at me, who's now sitting in the drivers seat. I can't hear what she's
saying but she's even more animated than me. I yell back at her to "Shut
up!". Then, the 30-something year old guy in the front passenger seat,
rolls down his window (in an apparent attempt to scare me into not repeating
myself) and calmly but sternly says to me, "Excuse me?" I walk up to
his window (I know-not a smart move) and say, "You heard
me, I told her to shut up. Don't you know that y'all are blocking
traffic! You need to move." Then the trailer park, life-beaten blonde starts
to yell again. I look at her dead in her eyes and shoot her the bird with the
perfect precision of "birds" I shot in middle school. I stand there calmly,
mere inches away from their van with a perfectly executed middle finger
move firmly fixed in front of my face (I wanted to make sure everyone
in the van could see it). Well clearly, that move didn't aid in facilitating
a calm exchange. The 30-something guy and the trailer park, life-beaten blonde
start to yell at me. Curse words easily rolling off the tongue of each
(everybody else in the van is silent). I calmly say to each one,
"Fuck you!" The young guy says, "What??!!" I step even closer to
his open window and say, "You heard me! I said Fuck you!", then I add,
with a little Dave Chappelle flair "Biatches!!!" The guy that was
originally in the drivers seat (and the original culprit), gets in the
back seat and shuts the door. The three-way yelling match continues as people
around us are watching and laughing. I stand there. I stand my ground and repeat
my chant, "Fuck you, Biatches!!!" Now I realize that the F-Bomb isn't
a particularly clever word, so I also added a few other clever quips I seem
to come up with (easily) when somebody makes me that mad. They drive off
and yell a racial slur when they're about 300 feet away from me. As they drive
off, I don't even turn my head to look at them, nor I do acknowledge their
apparent lack of verbal stamina. I mean, how original is a racial slur? Zzzzzz.
BORING! Sis drives up with a look on her face like she was ready to jump out of
the truck and start scrapping! When I opened the door to get in, she said, "I
didn't see what happened but I saw you looking really animated when you were at
that van. I was ready to start fighting!" She's a good little sister but
physical contact wasn't necessary, a war of words is what the occasion
called for. Hey, I'm not bragging but I don't think anybody can beat me in an
angry match of verbal ping-pong. It's not the most attractive feature of my
personality but it's served me well at times. And I haven't been that
angry in SEVERAL years, so it was good to cut loose on such deserving victims.
Look, I'm not proud of my behavior that night but I realized something important
about myself. Sometimes it feels good to say exactly what you think, no matter
how crass. I felt like a gigantic 50 pound brick was just surgically removed
from my azz (I don't know why I wrote that). For a short time after, I felt
truly free. Don't misunderstand, I don't advocate yelling and cursing at
complete strangers (in fact I don't recommend it). I just mean, you
should take care to be true to yourself, sometimes in extreme cases.
Really, I'm not that crazed-eyed angry chick anymore (I was that way from
middle school through my late teens/ very early twenties). Sure, I need to
find a more socially-acceptable, less angry way to be true to myself. I
now know though, that there are elements of myself that need expressing. Maybe I
need to blog more. Maybe I need to be more vocal with those things that bother
me instead of bottling them up. Maybe I need to take up kick boxing. Who knows!?
I don't have all the answers. All I know is that I'm an incomplete work of art,
so are the people I love. Embracing that fact makes me love them and myself
more. I guess this revelation didn't end up being as poignant and poetic as I
would've liked but you get the idea (I hope). At the very least, you now know
even more of my shortcomings, which I'm sad to say are considerable. I can say
that experience reminded me that nobody's perfect, least of all me. Unless
of course "Perfect" is a tall, foul-mouthed, brown-skinned chick with braids.
Hey, everybody's definition of perfection is different. Thank
Goodness!
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