Temerity Jane

Last week was a bit of an odd week for me, and though I’d considered starting to blog again for a long time now, it was last week that just pushed me over the edge.

Mostly I’m just sick of telling the story, might as well have it all in one place.

I’ve got to tell you, the story doesn’t start to get good until Wednesday or Thursday of last week, but we need to start with Monday. The whole week was just a mess, a combination of me behaving completely out of character for myself combined with the normal ridiculous crap that tends to happen to me.

Right, so, Monday.

You can pretty safely say I’m a non-confrontational type person. I will go far out of my way to avoid confrontation, really. Not because I’m a wimp, or a weenie, but because I just can’t be bothered with other people dragging drama into my life. So I’m a relatively low-key, go with the flow type for the most part. I need to say all that so you can see that this is really, truly not typical behavior for me. I mean sometimes I think of pushing over slow people on the sidewalks, or throwing rocks at the house of the guy who doesn’t want me to park on the perfectly legal stretch of street outside of his house, but I don’t ever actually act on these feelings. I just bottle those feelings up with all the other ones, to later be unlocked with the help of Captain Morgan.

But Monday, oh Monday. I was in a mood. I had spent the weekend up at my parents’ place in north eastern Pennsylvania to attend my cousin’s babyshower. I drove up on Saturday, arriving mid-afternoon, and was on my way back by Sunday at 5pm. About 500 miles of driving in 36 hours. I was a bit pooped. On top of that, I just came away from work that day with a really bad attitude about some things that were going on, but this story is not about my job.

This is what I wanted – I wanted to leave work, I wanted a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake, and I wanted to go home and be left alone to nap off the rest of my rage. So I get through the leaving work part, and get to McDonald’s.

Now the set up of this McDonald’s is such that you turn into the drive through lane directly from the street, and past that lane is a parking lot. You can’t picture it, I know, but just bear with me. So I’ve got my blinker on, making the little turn into the lane. It’s a tight turn – I used to not be able to make it so well in my Accord, but now that I’m driving my super sweet Yaris hatchback, I can swing right in there. So I’m making my turn when this guy in a giant SUV comes FLYING across the parking lot – not from the street, but from the actual McDonald’s parking lot. There’s only one way into the parking lot, and you need to consciously bypass the drive through to get into it. Well, though he was already in the lot, he comes zipping over to deliberately cut me off and get into the drive through lane before me, almost hitting my car. And since he was coming in from the parking lot instead of from the street as is expected, his giant unnecessary vehicle of suburban consumer ostentaciousness was blocking the lane for anyone else to be able to pull into the drive through behind him.

But me, Miss Non-Confrontational, I just gritted my teeth and pulled into the parking lot. Fine. If you’re in such a hurry to get home to mow your grass or feign interest in your kids’ lives or whatever it is these office-dwelling big-car-driving self-important jackasses do, you go on ahead. I’ll go inside.

So I go in and acquire my desired strawberry milkshake, and also a Diet Coke and leave the restaurant. I’ve got the milkshke in my left hand, the Diet Coke tucked into my left elbow, and my keys in my right hand. Mr. Speedy McGasGuzzlePants is coming around the back of the restaurant from the drive through at the same time. My hands are full, I’m wearing 3″ heels, and I’m still mad, so I passive aggressively take my sweeeeet time walking past him. As you’ll recall, I was in a mood.

“COME ON!,” he yells from his car.

Oh, wrong idea today, buddy.

I flip him off as I walk the rest of the way over to my car and set my drinks down on the hood to unlock the doors.

“Oh, real NICE. Nice example for the kids!”

I don’t know what I was thinking right then, I certainly wasn’t thinking like myself. And to be fair to me, as I always am, I hadn’t noticed his 872 children in the car.

“Yeah,” I say, “and almost hitting my car in your rush to cut me off at the drive through was a nice example, too… OF BEING AN INCONSIDERATE BASTARD.”

(Even I was shocked at me.)

Just then, perfectly timed, the little girl in the front seat (Small child! In the front seat! Let’s not get me started!) says, “See Daddy, I told you she was here first!”

And could I leave well enough alone? No. By this point I was grinding my teeth. Just the wrong day to get in my way, the straw that broke Mark Hamil’s back.

I say, “Nice to see you’re not rubbing off on your kids, asshole.”

Again, all I can tell you was that I was seriously DYING for this man, twice my size but probably also close to twice my age, to get out of his car. What was I going to do if he did? I don’t know. But you know how rage is.

So the man yells back, “You can’t TALK to me like that!”

And before I could respond, he slams on the gas and peeeeeeels out of there.

I guess I am more intimidating than I thought. They WERE some pretty tall heels.