I was in my local Jewel’s market Sunday morning at about 7:30 am. As you can imagine, it was sparsely populated and had only one checkout line open, but there were only 4 people in front of me in the checkout line.
An old, white male who was directly in front of me suddenly turned to me and said, “Old man Biden … Trump would have had all these lines open!” Something snapped in me and I thrust my arm out with my palm up as if I was physically pushing him away and, in a loud and hostile voice I said, “DON’T! … JUST DON’T!!”
It was loudly audible in that sparsely populated and relatively quiet market, and all the people around the front looked at us. He became flushed, turned quickly forward, and never looked at me again. I was embarrassed because I apparently make a “mini-scene”, and people were probably wondering what in the world he said or did to me to evoke such a response.
In any case, I kind of shocked myself because I didn’t realize the animosity I’ve been harboring inside of me. I’ve always been confident as to how well I know myself, but do we really know ourselves as much as we think we do? I’m wondering if other people have had similar experiences.
In the parking lot of a grocery store I saw a man about to walk away from the shopping cart he’d just unloaded. It made me irrationally angry. I yelled, “it’s an asshole move to leave that cart there”.
He could have easily kicked my ass, so I was lucky he returned the cart to a collection spot. I blame my behavior on the beta blocker I take.
A couple of weeks ago, I got into a shouting match with a couple of assholes who were vaping on a CTA bus. They insisted it wasn’t smoking. Since then, I’ve looked it up and, lo and behold, vaping on the CTA has been illegal since 2014. So I’m all set for next time.
I can’t blame you for that response. If someone said that to me the best I could possibly manage is “What exactly do you think the President’s job is?”