Not always; that meme seems to have taken off, but really, a lot of folks use the expression to say thanks or express genuine sympathy.
Last spring a renter across the street was watching her kids play as I was out getting the mail. One of them said “Damn it!” and she promptly yelled “Watch your fuckin’ mouth!” at the top of her lungs.
I had to turn back inside promptly to hide my bemused laughter.
I was stationed in Cape Canaveral and had a friend in Miami that I would drive down to visit on occasion. Another “acquaintance” at the station was from a town just north of Miami. He didn’t have a car so one weekend I agreed to drive him down to his parents so he could visit whilst I visited my friend for the weekend. Again, this guy from the station was in no way a friend of mine. Just some guy I barely knew or cared for.
When we get to his house, I’m thinking I’ll just drop him off and leave. But he insists I come into the house so I can meet his parents. I think this is real strange as we are both in our early 20’s, straight men, not even friends, and who meets parents in that situation? But he really insists like it means so much to him and is important. So I begrudgingly go in.
Mom is there and is normal enough and thanks me for bringing whoever home. Acquaintance asks ‘Where’s dad?” and mom says he’s laying down in the back of the house. Mom kinda acts like “leave dad alone”, so I get up to take off. But acquaintance insists that dad come out to meet me and makes me sit back down. Guy goes down hall looking for dad.
After about 5 uncomfortable minutes of waiting and making small talk with mom, dad comes into the room. Big, older, guy that kinda reminded me of Rodney Dangerfield. He walks up to me, smiles warmly, shakes my hand and thanks me for driving his son home. The “WTF” moment was he was wearing nothing but a pair of white briefs. No shirt, no pants. Nobody commented or explained his attire. Everyone acted like this was the most normal thing ever. Strangest introduction I ever had.
Rodney would have skipped the briefs…
This reminds me of one time at a Lowe’s (hardware/home renovation store) I was walking along the main corridor toward the checkout registers when I remembered I had to get something and stopped to look at the signs indicating what aisle the item was in. A couple following behind me with a load of landscape timbers nearly plowed into me. The male half complained that I’d stopped too suddenly and needed to look where I was going.
Apparently I had violated some imaginary store pedestrian rule by not gradually slowing and using my turn signal, in case some dipshit with a pile of wood was tailgating me.
This is a frustrating one, because plenty of time others have gotten in my way, and rudely obstructed me from getting to where I want to go in the supermarket, and I get very annoyed by them… and then I realise I’m as stop-start as anyone else in the erratic way I careen around the aisles.
Real estate office. Freezing cold Februay night. Myself and one agent in the office. Couple comes in: We’re on Social Service, we’re homeless, we’re living with our chldren in our car, we need a place right away.
Agwnt: Okay, I have a place you can move into right away. I just have to verify that Social Serive will pay for it.
Woman: Where is it located?
Agent: On Pindle Avenue.
Woman, extremely indigent: I"M NOT LIVING THERE!
The agent said that was all we had and the people left in a hurry. The agent and I were totally silent for a minute, then laughed our asses off for five.
Well, it’s like driving. You don’t just suddenly stop in the middle of a trafficked street to look at house numbers; you indicate, and then pull out of the flow of traffic.
(my bolding) - was that Freudian or intentional?
It’s like driving in the sense that you needs to be a safe distance from what’s cruising along in front of you, in case of a sudden stop.
And it’s a freaking store, for crying out loud. You might expect other people to stop and look for things to buy.
Yeah, but you said you were in the main corridor. People that don’t yield walking space to others are jerks. Just like driving, you also have to be cognizant of the people all around you, including behind you.
So we should all wear little rear-view-mirrors maybe when we’re shopping? And strap brake lights to our butts?
I love it how some people resort to sanctimonious hyperbole in their quest to justify a lack of common courtesy.
“What, I’m supposed to say ‘excuse me’ when shoving past someone in a narrow corridor? What is this, Elizabethan England? I suppose I should be decked out like Sir Walter Raleigh, ruffles, cape and all and bow low and pronounce, ‘I beg your deepest pardon, good sirs and fair ladies, may I have use of this corridor?!’ And throw my Members Only jacket over any inconvenient mud puddle for any old bag to tramp over.”
Are you talking about me? I really have no idea.
I was driving down a busy street in Oxford a few years ago. This was one of those multi-use streets designed to slow down traffic: the entire street is designated as a cycle lane, and there are chicanes in it and it’s covered in pedestrian refuges. A challenge for the uninitiated but very effective (far fewer accidents on this kind of road).
Ahead of me is a woman in a car, and riding alongside the car, very close, is a hippy on a bicycle. She’s going at a reasonable speed, he’s not overtaking her, so should really be behind her - but he’s actually cycling on her outside and right in her blind spot. I’m certain she didn’t know he was there.
She makes a mild swerve of a couple of feet to drive round a parked car, causing the cyclist to wobble and nearly to hit her vehicle. He cycles faster until he’s in front of her and stops dead, causing her to have to brake suddenly.
He starts yelling and gesticulating through her window. She’s a woman on her own and is cowering, terrified. I was outraged at his and, being more vocal than my physical prowess should allow, wound down my window and shouted “Oi!!! You!!!” He turns. “What do you think you’re doing?!” I yell. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” He starts approaching my car instead, carrying his bicycle in front of him, allowing the woman to drive away.
“Yes I am!!!” he shouts back, stomping, red-faced towards my car. “I’M FUCKING SUICIDAL!!!”
At this point I locked my doors and shouted, for no apparent reason, “you look crazy, I’m winding my window up right now”, which I did. He got to my car and punched my driver’s window as hard as he could. It didn’t break but it made a terrible noise and must have hurt his knuckles really badly. He glared at me in a frenzied manner, then picked his bike up over his head and threw it with full force onto the hood of my car. It bounced off onto the road, and I drove off, very fast, leaving him standing in the street with a bent bicycle, raging after me.
Unless you have a handicap of some sort, why would you need a rear view mirror to know who’s around you? People have peripheral vision that covers a huge swath of space, and as you turn your head you cover even more space. I can’t fathom that you wouldn’t know that someone is following so closely behind you. That lack of environmental awareness would border on dangerous, and not just for walking in a store.
Brake lights wouldn’t be needed if you knew that people were behind you, because instead of just rudely stopping, you’d make an effort to clear a path. Even if there’s no room for you to move out of the traffic pattern, you’d acknowledge the person in order to allow them to pass, because we’re living in a society where mutual cooperation prevents us all from going crazy and killing each other.
Haha, welcome to Japan. Or at least to my little corner of Japan, which is filled with old people. However, I’m given to understand it’s more widespread, and this seems to be confirmed by my forays into the larger cities.
Of course, it’s anecdotal that Japanese people are less aware of their surroundings, and I haven’t been observing in the states for awhile, but the cultural phenomenon I’ve heard to explain this has to do with crowding and privacy. Because there are so many people, you pretend like you don’t notice stuff around you; everyone becomes their own bubble of privacy in the middle of a crowd. After years of pretending to not notice stuff, they actually tune it out.
I’ve never come up with an even possible explanation for this.
I’m waiting at a bus stop in East Berkeley on San Pablo. It’s a pretty sketchy neighborhood that’s somewhere between industrial and slum. Anyway, I’m just getting off of work, so I am a blonde girl in business casual. At the bus stop with me are a small assortment of random neighborhood people, including a couple of homeless guys.
A young African-American man, probably in his late teens, approaches me. He is well-dressed. Although his clothes are “urban,” they are brand new and he seems to wear them uncomfortably. Everything about him says “nice kid.” He has a medium sized rolling suitcase with him. Anyway, of all the people at the bus stop, he comes up to me and asks:
“Excuse me, where is the ghetto?”
I’m a little taken aback, but I helpfully explain that if he goes up a few blocks, it gets a lot shadier. He looks out at the low-grade urban decay and says “No, like, where is the real ghetto?”
I think for a minute and tell him his best bet is to take BART up to Richmond, which counts as full-blown ghetto. He seems keen on the idea, but then asks how much it’d cost to get there. When I estimate BART would cost around five bucks, he looks crestfallen.
“Man, I spent all my money just coming here.”
I ask him where he is come from. He replies “Oakland,” which happens to be where I was living. I start laughing and say “What? Oakland doesn’t have enough ghettos for you?”
Just then my bus came.
WTF? Any ideas?
I was walking to my car in the grocery store parking lot with my 2 young children. A lady comes up to me and says, “What beautiful boys! Are they your children or your grandchildren?”
I was in my 20s at the time, and everyone always thought I looked young for my age. I guess I could have had a child at age 13 who then had children at 13… so technically I could have been their grandmother. But what is more likely when you see a 20-something woman with kids - that she is a mom or the world’s youngest grandmother?
even sven: missionary?