Not Nice Today

Ok, so, you all know me as a pretty nice person. And I try to be. I'm not big on drama--I don't thrive on it, choose to create it, or live with it in my daily life. Those who know me well would say that I'm very easygoing, even-keeled.

But...

The fact that I'm small (4'10") leads certain people to mis-judge and think that I can be pushed around because I look pretty defenseless.

This is not the case.

Growing up always smaller than everyone in my classes at school and in my age group taught me to be pretty scrappy. Because little people get pushed around a lot. It's either grow thicker skin or go home crying every night.

And I won't even get into the being ignored by store clerks when I'm needing assistance while they all trip over themselves to help my tall, blonde, beautiful sister. I'll save that for another time.

What I'm talking about right now are the unfortunate souls who walk around angry at the world and constantly looking for a target. They're mad because their wife burned their toast that morning or their dog peed on their tire and they're out for revenge. They'll take it out on anyone. Their mistake is zeroing in on me as easy prey.

I happened upon one such idiot just today.

The situation was that I came to pick up Girlie after school. There is a parking lot fashioned into a loop so parents can drive up, stop, load their children, and keep driving. Good system if your child is there waiting for you. If you're early, which I was, you can loop around, and if you don't immediately see your child and there's a parking spot available, you can park. But you'll need to back in or else you'll be stuck there until every last car has left the loop. Some greedy parents hover too long in the loop, or even stop even though they're not in the process of actively loading a child. This is against the rules and highly frowned upon by all who encounter these people who think they're the only people in the world that matter. Again, a story for another time. The loop is meant to be in perpetual motion.

So, driving up, I came to the loop but did not see my child. I encountered a hoverer, but being of good nature and not stuck, I decided I would go around this rule-breaker and properly park myself. There was an open spot that looked maneuverable. Believe me, in the van, I'm not going to even attempt to back into a parking spot if I didn't think I could do it. Especially when all the other drivers of the parked cars are sitting behind the wheels of their cars watching me.

So I positioned myself well and started the process of backing up. Plenty of room on both sides. Checking, good, backing, good, checking, still good, backing, good...then HONK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
which, of course, freaked the crap out of me and caused me to slam on the brakes to see what the emergency was. The honk came from the car on my left, manned by an older man in a Ford Taurus. There was at least two feet between my van and his car. He glared at me, and I motioned to him with my hands (no I didn't give him the bird, I held my hands apart showing him how much space there was between our vehicles). Then I proceeded to finish parking.

When I turned off the engine, I turned to the man and said to him through our open windows, "Did you just honk at me?" and he of course tried to pretend that he didn't hear me. That's when you know you've got them. When they try to pretend that they don't see you or hear you when you confront them over something stupid they've done. So I asked him again, "Excuse me, was it you that honked at me?" and he finally looked up and said "Yeah, you were gonna back right into me!" and I said "There was plenty of room between our cars! There was no reason for you to honk!" and he said "well, from the way you drive, I figured you were gonna hit me!" and I said "What makes you think you're an expert on how I drive?" and he said "from the way you whipped around this parking lot!" (which was not true). I said "My driving was fine. You just freaked out over nothing." At which point big-man-behind-the-wheel-but-chicken-when-you-confront-him-about-it got out of the car to walk away from me toward the school. I couldn't resist yelling after him "HAVE A NICE DAY!" Mr. Think-you-own-the-whole-entire-parking-lot-because-you-got-there-three-minutes-before-I-did. I've got better things to do than to try to scare little mommies just coming to pick up their kids from school. Gay your life must be (to quote that old kookabura song--does anyone remember that one?)

Anyway, go pick on someone your own size as my kindergarten teacher used to say. You chose the wrong mark today. I'm not going to sit there and take it.

Which brings me to my last point: if you're going to act like a jackass, be prepared to take your lumps when someone calls you on it.