Then offering to show you the scar for the one that winged her in the ass and hit the Buddha tattoo right between the eyes so that it has a third eye, which is appropriate, because the third eye allows you to see spiritual stuff.
I used to know a girl I deemed the Angry Buddhist®. She had a worthiness problem - if a subject wasn’t a) Buddhist or b) something to do with altruism, then it was worth only a sneer or a roll of the eyes.
I used to speculate about saying something to her, and her screaming: “You bastard. I was that far… THAT FUCKING FAR from fucking ENLIGHTENMENT - then you had to come along and FUCK IT ALL UP!!!”
Say, have you ever thought of writing more? Jeez, that’s a wonderful image.
This is a great thread!!! Don’t we all know some jerk like Peggy? (Only, not as awful.) We knew a guy we called One-Better-Floyd. His real name was Floyd, which tells you about all you need to know about him.
The OP gets my personal medal for being a nice, patient guy.
I’ve dropped this woman off at the airprort too. But, because I studied at the feet of Latka the Taxi-Lama, I did it quicker, cheaper, with more aplomb in my '65 Corvette than you ever could.
Thanks for the kind words, vison. I’ve been wanting get back into writing again. Your encouragement is quite helpful. (And thanks for not teasing me for the “rosing” bit. I spotted it right after the edit window closed.)
I agree with you, by the way, about the OP. I’m somewhat less patient with the One-Better-Floyd types. Once I cease being amused, I start calling them on what they say.
CheifScott made soy milk come out my nose!
This Peggy sounds like a fascinating woman. I’d like to hear more.
Aithele, I feel your pain, or at least felt it. For 60 minutes. Back in the 20’s.
A couple of months ago I called a woman that I met through an online personal. We started chatting via e-mail, and it was painful. She’s ask me my what my favorite movie was, and I’d give a short paragraph for an answer, for example. “For comedies, I like…, for dramas, I’m fond of…, but I think my all-time favorite is…” You know, keep it conversational. All of her answers were one-word answers. Most her replies were not more that five words total. Ouch.
So then we got on the phone. I can lead a conversation when I need to, and I can be a good listener, but for the most part I consider most normal conversations to be 50/50. I talk half of the time, and the other person talks half of the time. Half of my talk is about myself, and half is about the other person. They do the same.
Not this woman. She dominated the entire conversation, and it was all about her. 100%. On the few occasions I could get a word in, I tried to steer the conversation either to myself (not that I have a burning desire to talk about me me me, but for Og’s sake, we’re supposed to be getting to know EACH OTHER), or to some other topic. I could almost FEEL her resisting the change. It was like pulling on a rubber band that would just snap right back. It was the same topic going on forever.
At least the topic was some sort of Peggy-like interesting thing, like scaling the Matterhorn, or reaching nirvana at Ted Danson’s house, or the time she single-handedly beat up 25 ninja terrorist pedophiles, right?
Oh hell no.
It was about her home renovations. In excruciating detail. There was a good 20 minutes just spent talking about retiling her floor. Another 15 was spent talking about the exact shade of teal on the walls of her living room, which made a great contrast with the slightly darker shade of teal in the kitchen, in which she’d just replaced all the countertops with marble, not really white marble, but more of an eggshell color, and how she’d gotten a really great deal at Home Depot, the best store in the world, because they didn’t have that shade at Lowe’s, but she was able to get the tiles for the guest room at Lowe’s, which has better prices on…
Snore.
I was finally able to get her to change the topic to something more interesting. Why this particular topic, I have no idea to this date. Romance and dating. At that point I had no desire whatsoever to engage in those sorts of activities with her, but I figured any change of scenery would be good, right?
Bad.
Move.
She started talking about her ex-husband. What came out of her mouth was the most hateful, vile, obscene, ugly stream of thoughts I’ve ever heard in my life. I mean, this woman had serious baggage. Major, major issues. It was like a fucking assault. Not just on her ex, but on me, you, and every man alive. I’ve seen kinder wars. I’m still recovering.
Last thing she said was “It was great talking to you! Call me tomorrow!”
Needless to say…
“The central tenet of Buddhism is not every man for himself.”
Your guest reminds me of Otto.
tdn, I’m sure that wasn’t the greatest time you had but reading it made me laugh.
My uncle told me all about his home renovations. I tuned out so much of it that I could not recreate the “conversation”. Though he did go into detail about not having running water because he refused to pay a water bill and how he gets his water from rain barrels set around his house and how it sucks when it hasn’t rained in awhile.
Uncle Squeegee, you should have idly mentioned the stories of Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire in Vietnam. How magnificent their self-sacrifice was for their beliefs. How no-one seems to have that sort of character these days. All this being said as you toy idly with a cigarette lighter. Clink,clink.
I read this post at work today. Now I’m responding from home.
I think we all know people like this: maybe not to the same degree as “Peggy,” but they’re out there. My thought is that these folks are really insecure about themselves. Why else would you even consider the oneupmanship at every conceivable moment? They’re insecure and like to present themselves in the best possible light at every turn, even if it means raining on someone else’s parade.
Most of us know when to clam up and accept other peoples’ accomplishments and achievements without saying a word about ourselves. My wife has a tiny bit of this in her. Pity them; I do.
Sorry to hear of your woes!
The next time my wife asks me if I missing dating, I’ll tell her of your story and how many times that was me.
Sounds like Eddy Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous. She’s a not-aging-gracefully forty-something fashion slave and party maniac who hates anything that her comparatively prim daughter likes. She claims to be a Buddhist when she thinks it will make her look good or when she can use it to put down something her daughter has. Occasionally she drags out the “I’m a Buddhist, darling,” line when she gets a sense of impending mortality and tries to purge various vices from her life; this inevitably fails in a spectacular fashion.
I bet he smelled great.
Ah yes, I have a ‘friend’ like that. He has a lot of confabulated stories but the only one I can remember is about when he was in Washington, D.C. He claims to have gotten drunk while bar-hopping. After leaving the final bar of the night, he proceeded to pee on a large black man’s shoes. The rightfully angered man demanded who this young incontinent punk was. Upon giving his name, he immediately adopted a respectful tone and said “Oh you are Mr. X’s son. Please allow me to escort you home.” Apparently this man was a secret service agent who was indebted to his father in some fashion. Or so the story goes.
That’s a logical assumption but actually he didn’t smell bad at all. So it either rained a lot recently in his area of Kentucky, he had plenty of water saved up, or he showered whenever he stayed in a motel on the trip down.