I headed to The Vitamin Cottage for my much-hated bi-annual trip to the grocery store. I picked a cart out and rolled it a short five feet to the produce section, jittered by the only other patron nearby, ripped off a plastic bag, and began filling it with organic mushrooms. The Vitamin Cottage is tiny, but not tiny enough for two people to not fit in the produce section -- with just a dash of patience, and a miniature amount of careful cart-maneuvering, two people who do not require a crane to lift them out of their bed can easily enjoy their shopping experience without having to smell each other's breath. Unfortunately for me today, the only other person in the produce section of The Vitamin Cottage was Ann Coulter disguised as Satan disguised as a frumpy middle-aged woman with long, gray hair, and dark sunglasses. So you know right away that I'm totally in the right here -- anytime there's an argument between two people indoors, and one of those people is wearing sunglasses, the person wearing sunglasses will always be at fault. So I've just squeezed by this woman and her cart (and her sunglasses) so I can do my shopping while she's doing her shopping because that's how we do it in the United States -- you pick out your oranges while I pick out my mushrooms, and we all live together in motherfucking harmony. I gave her space, I did not grope her, I did not grope her oranges, and I positively did not fart in her presence. I was being totally courteous in that we're-here-doing-the-same-thing-at-the-same-time,-but-please,-let's-not-interact kind of way, and then she comes out of freaking nowhere like a Mitt Romney counterpoint and uses her tiny shopping cart to Battle Ram my shopping cart into an apple display and continues on her way like she didn't just do that thing I just said -- that thing where she pile drives my cart into a stack of apples.
I notice this behavior and become agitated. I continue to load my cart with produce while I think of what a well-adjusted person might say to that. Lots of people wouldn't say anything, but I'm a firm believer that when a person slams her cart into your cart for no reason, and neither one of you are in bumper cars, silence is not an option -- if you play Monster Jam Truck Smash with my cart, you play Monster Jam Truck Smash with me. The first things that run through my quickly-swelling head are "HELLO, MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA. YOU KILLED MY FAITH IN HUMANITY -- PREPARE TO DIE!" and "BRING IT, TWAT WAFFLE!" But those are things that would cause me to lose a minimum of thirty five percent of my hair before leaving the store, and I sort of thought I'd always wait for cancer to do that. Then I think I could just ask her if she wanted to talk about something, but that's sooooo giving her too much credit. But I actually did end up saying nothing because Sunglasses does the unthinkable and loops around at the end of the aisle and starts heading directly toward me at normal browsing pace. So I did what any self-respecting, recently-semi-assaulted human being would do -- I made the face that Hulk Hogan is making in the photo below and ran my tiny shopping cart full force toward her tiny shopping cart and stopped just before I hit her.
I don't know, maybe I should've left the American flag and the Crisco muscle rub out of it, because that lady was looking largely surprised. Like heart-attack surprised. But she gathered herself and her extraordinarily dowdy going-out frock and muttered, in the exact voice of Roz from Monsters, Inc., "I said excuse me, but you didn't move." And she shuffled herself off to the cheeses like a grumpy little frump mouse.
"We're talking about unchecked aggression here, dude." ~Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski.
ReplyDeleteAnd often times the only way to deal with uncheck aggression is to fight back or do nothing. High five for standing up to that mean ol' lady.