WTF? Since when is being barefoot outside not polite?? It’s not like you were indoors in a public building, you were on the natural earth for goshsakes
Time to buy some FiveFingers!
Let me start by saying that I am overweight. I don’t think I shake the sidewalk or anything, but I have extra poundage on me, for sure. This will become relevant.
So, this morning, I drove into my office and then walked across the street to get breakfast at a fast food restaurant before going in to work. Unfortunately, the restaurant was about 15 minutes from opening for the day, but I had a book with me, so I just started reading to pass the time.
Shortly thereafter, a woman in her 50s shows up, also early. And despite my best efforts to bury my head in my book, she proceeds to share her feelings with me about such topics as: older men dating younger women, wealthy blacks in the 1920s, the lack of assertiveness of Asian and Armenian women, snotty skinny girls in their teens and 20s and their inability to judge people for who they are rather than what they look like, and other assorted topics. I feined a low level of interest and exercised massive amounts of patience throughout the 25 minutes that passed between when I first encountered her and when I finally placed my order, and I am not exaggerating when I say that she talked non-stop for the duration.
After I’d ordered and it had been clearly established that she would be eating there while I’d be heading back to my office (I had planned to eat there and read, actually, but you can understand why I ultimately decided I’d be better off just taking my food and leaving), she walked over and gave me this parting wisdom.
“You know, I used to be, like 200–I mean, like 170 pounds. Lemme just tell you, you’re fine the way you are. You’re fine the way you are.”
People like that need a nice punch in the face.
Joe
Yeah, sitting next to a person. What an asshole!
Questions are welcomed; insults are not.
Another WTF moment on a lighter note. Years ago, when Brown Eyed Kid was just pea, our family took a trip to California to visit family. While in Santa Barbara we went out to eat and stroll and ended up parking several blocks from the restaurant. Brown Eyed Guy was wearing baby Brown in a front carrier (like this one) as our group is walking down the street towards the restaurant. Walking towards us is a black man who starts pointing at my husband with both hands and loudly proclaiming, “YOU DA MAN! YOU DA MAN!” He continued to do this shouting back at Mr. Brown after we passed him. We’re not sure why, but we have always assumed he was commenting on Mr. Brown’s exceptional masculinity while wearing a baby carrier.
Not long after we gave him a t-shit that read this very message in big red font. We still think he’s da man.
You’re not seriously defending a person who, on purpose, gets on an otherwise empty bus and sits next to the only other rider?
I stand by my punch.
Joe
Man, if we get to urinal etiquette it’s gonna go nuclear around here.
To add to some of the tourist stories, when I was 16 I went on a class trip to England. My friends and I were walking down the street in Oxford, not talking, and this guy yells “Hello, Americans!” We asked how he knew we were Americans, because our accents hadn’t been on display, and he says “You walk like John Wayne!”
It’s often easy to identify American tourists in Europe. They look different, they move different, they dress different. Simply being either white or black and being from another Western country doesn’t mean that you’re indistinguishable from the locals.
You still get to keep your “wtf” points, though! 
It’s the same etiquette. It’s odd to sit/pee next to someone when there’s room elsewhere. It’s far far more odd to think that deserves violence.
True. I was driving in the western part of the ROI and marveling at how friendly all the locals were; as I drove past, they were always waving!
It was my second day there that I found out that it was the hand signal for “slow down” :rolleyes: .
Every time I have to take a cab in Madrid I get filled with dread. Some of them ask for the destination, drive there and charge me; the majority decide to take charge of my life. They give me the advice that I need, yessir, and they do so in the imperative:
- women shouldn’t work outside the house (at least this one was male), I have to find me a good husband and quit this travelling crap,
- I must become self-employed (been self-employed for several years, thank you),
- what a woman needs is a good providing husband and three of four kids (with specific instructions on kid spacing),
- a variant on the previous one, where what a woman needs is a spouse and three or four kids and the cabbie was very preoccupied with the question of how should lesbian couples solve the providing problem (male cabbie too); he didn’t ask which way I swing, just told me what to do depending on the way I happened to swing,
- instructions on how to decorate my house (what can I say, I’m really not into chintz),
- more instructions on how to decorate, but this was a woman and she was much more up to date than the chintz guy,
- women need to get into technical majors (I totally agree, what with being an engineer and all; got this from both men and women).
This one was from Barcelona: you should read your Bible every day and go to church as often as you can. Matched the cab’s décor, mind you, so it wasn’t really surprising.
Someone who takes enough cabs should be able to keep a blog just on those conversations. Note I’ve listed only those who give me orders, not the ones who tell me what does the Government (at any level) have to do about whatever subject, the ones who rant about linguistic policies or the UFO-lovers.
When I was on holiday in Taormina in Sicily a couple of years ago, a tiny group of late middle aged people stopped me in the main square and started pointing excitedly at my bag, talking away to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t speak their language (one of the Scandanavian ones was my best guess) and they couldn’t speak much English but after a couple of minutes I work out they are very taken with my bag. It IS pretty unusual, bright coloured woollen flowers all over it, made in the same way you’d make pompoms with a ball of wool and a circle of cardboard. (I’m making it sound hideous but it’s quite pretty in an offbeat way.)
I tried telling them I in fact had bought it right there in Taormina so they could buy their own if they liked it that much but they didn’t care or didn’t understand. They wanted a photo of the bag. But not just of the bag - me holding up the bag for display too. Like a couple of earlier posters, I imagined their friends and family back in Oslo (or wherever) being shown the holiday pictures and saying stuff like “Okay, so here you were in Taormina - wow, it sure is pretty… and who was this? This woman with curly red hair holding up a bag for the camera? And why does she look so puzzled?”
This happens a lot, so I’m not sure if it counts.
My partner has straight brown hair. I have straight brown hair. When we go out in public with my 3 year old daughter, people always want to talk to us about her curly red hair. The WTF question for me is “Where did she get her hair from?”. Don’t people think about the implications of what they’re asking? I smile and I say “My father’s a red head” because that’s true, and because I don’t necessarily want to talk about her biological father (also a red head) with strangers, cashiers and random assorted people we meet in the street.
I’ve been tempted to point to my partner and say “His best mate!”, or better yet, have him turn to me and demand to know the answer to that question too. One day… one day.
Or: suddenly look at your daughter in a startled manner then turn to your partner and say “Dammit [partner name], you brought the wrong one home from nursery again!”
I was once walking down the street with my wife when a wino lurched toward me and said “I didn’t know you was like that - I thought you was into boys!” I muttered a “Not me, mate” and the wife and I quickly scurried away.* Scarred me for life, that one.
- For the record I am not now, nor have I ever been, into boys.
Just had another one this weekend. I took my wife and daughter to see Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. At the border checkpoint on the Peace Bridge, the Canadian guard asked me where we were going. I replied “Niagara Falls.” She asked the purpose of the visit and I replied “To see the falls.” She lost her shit and started shouting at me about having an attitude and launched into a rant that included repeated use of the phrase “MY country!” After shouting all the questions at me that are normally asked in a businesslike way, she had me pulled over and my vehicle searched. The other Canadian personnel were all pretty low key and polite as they went about checking our documents and searching my jeep.
In the future, now that I know that “to see the falls” is the wrong answer, I will be sure to reply “Smuggling weapons and drugs. Might engage in a spot of pro-Quebec separatist terrorism, if I have the time.”
The “Where did you get him?” incident reminds me of a little jingle that used to pop out of my mother’s mouth from time to time: “This is the day they give babies away with every bar of soap!”
I just realized: I’ve Been one of those WTF moments.
Back in college, my roommate asked me a favor: to drive him & his GF to a fraternity brother’s (who I didn’t know) wedding and take some pictures. So I did. His gift to them both was an expensive bottle of champagne.
I drove them both there early on a Sat morning and see Groomsmen at the church doors, obviously seating people for a wedding. We parked and walked over to them. My roommate said “friend of the groom”. Odd glares commenced, but we go in anyway. The roommate put the bottle on a gift table in back of the church. I whipped out the SLR & am snapping pictures. The Bride was at the alter and I heard over my shoulder, “Thats funny. I thought Joe was dating a brunette.” Chords if the bridal march began to play and I had a truly happy shot of the Bride lined up in my viewfinder, zoomed to close-up, when I felt a gentle shoulder tap and heard his GF whisper softly, “Stop taking pictures. We’re at the wrong wedding.” :eek: :smack:
Through the zoom, I saw the Bride looked about 16, as did the Groom. But it was the Bride who had the little belly bump, it was the Groom’s side of the church that was near empty, there looked like there was just one door out the front and the "who the Hell are You"s were just one short shot-gun service away. I packed away the SLR (and padded the sides of the camera bag with the manuals).
It might have been survival instinct. It might have been logic. It might have been an Indiana Jones movie that I once saw (Harrison Ford, IOU (1) beer, wherever you are… ), but I remembered that there is always another way out of any Church/Temple/Tomb of Mummified Undead. And, as the service ended, I grabbed the roommate’s GF by the hand dragged her up up to the father/reverend/paster/bowling-pin-in-robes and said, “Hi! How you doin’? Say, is there a back door of this place? Cause we Really need to leave. Now.”
He gritted his teeth an an angry “if I weren’t at the end of a wedding & getting paid, you Heathen Sonuva…” smile and gestured over his shoulder. I smiled and am headed towards that door when I realized our party was one light. Where’d my roommate go?
And that’s when I saw him at the gift table at the other end of the church, next to the reception line we wanted to avoid, fishing out his bottle of champagne. “We’ll drop it off at the reception,” I heard him say to mortified guests as he trotted back up to where we were. And at that point, all semblance of dignity lost, we just bolted out the back door of the church.
I was parked in the back of the parking lot and I had just gotten the engine started. They had just gotten in and had shut the doors when I realized something troubling: This Church may have had two exits, but this parking lot only had One. And the Bride & Groom were there…staring at us. And all of their guests.
The pregnant Bride looked very upset. Just like in Church.
The young Groom looked puzzled. Just like in Church.
And the Angry Groomsmen looked Pissed & Mean… f-ck Church. At least one had fished a 2x4 out from somewhere (what the Hell kinda Church stocks 2x4s? Jesus might have been a Carpenter, but he sure as Hell wasn’t a Journeyman at Local 601…).
Now a reasonable man might have tried to explain. A better man might have tried to negotiate. But a poorer man was behind the wheel & knew the price of windows vs the price of an alignment. I jumped the curb blocks & did a side-walk run… and by the time rubber was again on asphalt, we were safely out of throwing range. Oh, sure there was lots of whining & groaning about heads bumping the headliner, but as Og is my witness, I had kept my word.
I drove 'em to a wedding. And I drove 'em home. 
I drove a cab 'twixt the hours of 4 pm and 7 am. In Detroit.
I got me some WTF moments…