Saturday, March 03, 2007
Better Late Then Never

I know I know. Life happens. Deal with it.

Incident No. 1

That being said the night before Valentine's Day, I was in a store with a friend of mine. We were doing some last minute goodie buying. We were in the Valentine aisle and there were these 2 boy next to us behaving rather badly.  They were smacking each other and knocking into the shelves. It was when they knocked into an elderly man that I said to them "Hey settle down,"  then I turned back towards my friend.  I didn't yell. I didn't say "Hey stop acting like little shits."  All I said was "Hey settle down." 

The older one of the two turned to me and said, "You shut your mouth."

I whipped myself back around and looked at this future juvenile delinquent and I said very slowly "Oh. I. Don't. Think. So." 

I didn't touch him (I wanted to slap his face), but I did flag down an employee of the store and informed her what had happened. She told the boys to follow her over to the dressing rooms --I followed -- where she called a manager.  I was telling the manager all that had happened and informed her that these boys obviously needed adult supervision.  She had the names of the parents paged throughout the store to come to the dressing rooms. 

We watched the boys turn on each other--accusing each other for the hot water they were now in.  The manager said "looks like they're blaming each other."  I responded "Yeah, with any luck they'll beat the shit out of each other when they get home."  We laughed.

An older sister of the boys came to the dressing rooms to see what was going on.  She motioned for them to follow her The manager told the girl that her parents needed to come claim the boys.  A few minutes later a man rolled up on one of those complimentary motorized chairs, and a woman followed him pushing a cart. 

I walked up to the man and began to tell him what had happened. I stressed how they had knocked into an elderly man---at this point the older boy interrupted me and yelled "It was an accident" to which I said "if you had been acting appropriately it wouldn't have happened.

When I told their father what his 'sweet' son had said to me the father raised his voice and said "Did you say that to his lady?"  The son quietly said "Yeah."  The father demanded that his son apologize.  The brat said "sorry."  The dad said "That wasn't good enough. You didn't say it like you meant it."  The son again parroted "sorry."  The manager proceeded to talk to the father after that.

The heavy-set woman (who I assume was their mom) stood there the whole time with a blank look on her face.

During whole exchange the younger boy kept looking at me nervously.  While we were walking away, my friend remarked that the younger kid had been looking at me funny.  I looked back to see him watching me.  I wondered if he was a student at my school.  I decided to look for him when I went to work the next day. So far, I haven't found him---BUT I do know him from somewhere. 

As we continued to walk away my friend stated "You know, most people would have just walked away." 

I immediately replied "Well I guess it's a good thing that I'm not most people."

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Incident No. 2

Yesterday I allowed my daughter to go to work with me. She had been bugging me since school started to let her miss a day of school and go 'help me' in my classroom.  I finally obliged. 

While we were coming home after school, we turned into the area where we live.  A car was in front of us. The roof of the car was piled with stuff.  All kinds of stuff.  We were going around a bend in the road when a WHEELBARROW CAME FLYING OFF THE ROOF OF THE CAR straight towards us.  I yelled "hang on" to my daughter, and I swerved to the right. Luckily it bounced to the left and missed us completely. 

A couple of minutes later we parked in our garage. My daughter quietly says "whoa, that was scary, mom."  I answered "Yes it was Jess, yes it was." then I went into the house to empty my bladder.