A Big Truck Doth Not Give Thee Right Of Way, Sirrah
My weekly post at the Midnight Hour is all about how you can’t please everyone. And about how writing is a solitary endeavor. I do wax a little bit snarky about writers who think Readers are too stupid to understand their deathless purple prose.
Hey, I’ve got to have some fun.
I am currently looking at a weekend spent all by my lonesome. Normally this would be a huge excuse to PAR-tay HAR-tay! But it is going to, instead, be an excuse to sleep. I think with nobody else to worry about in the house I might be able to make a withdrawal from my sleep bank. Heaven knows I have enough stored up through all the insomnia. I wonder if it’s accumulating interest and I’ll be a sleepy old woman?
I am in one of those moods today where I seriously could not care less. It’s an effort to remember to be polite on days like today. I mean, I won’t be openly rude lest you step over That Line, but I have little time or patience for fools or idiots today. Driving home from dropping the UnSullen One at a friend’s house was an Interesting Experience. More about that in a minute.
I was polite at the drive-thru, they were highly apologetic when they didn’t give me my full complement of chicken nuggets. (Hey, have you ever tried to convince a kid chicken nuggets are invisible?) I had to pay with my debit card, and Burgerville wants you to show ID when handing over your plastic. That’s reasonable. I saw the sign and had my ID ready.
The girl expressed surprise and thankfulness that I did. “Hey, I’m literate,” I replied. “The sign’s hardly inconspicuous.”
“Tell that to some of the people that come through here,” she sighed. “I always feel like saying, look, you want your card stolen and used at Burgerville? You should be glad we ask for ID.”
To which all I can say is, amen, sistah. Sing it. Anyway, I had to circle back around and they were very apologetic. To which I replied, “Hey, it’s chicken nuggets, not uranium. No problem.”
The girl at the second window thought that was hilarious. I always like to make someone’s day.
Back to the Interesting Experience. The thing I noticed today on the road was the American sense of entitlement. Jebus on a cracker, when it’s a four-way stop it’s first come first serve, then after that the person on the right has right-of-way. Some jacka$$ in a huge truck (seriously, it deserved its own zip code) honked his horn at me because he thought the size of his truck alone gave HIM right-of-way.
AKA, he is American and has a huge truck to compensate for his tiny naughty bits. Ergo, he feels entitled to stick the huge truck wherever he wants despite traffic laws and common decency.
This, when I was already three-quarters of the way through my turn after waiting for a good ten minutes around the stop sign, following an orderly progression of round-robin right-of-way.
I am not ashamed to admit I stuck out my tongue as I went past him. Hey, I was less than a mile from home and sick of dealing with idiots. I prefer to take the back way, because it’s like some switch flips at three-thirty and every mouthbreathing moron in the world descends on the I-205 interchange and doesn’t stop clear of the intersection when it’s jammed. No, they block the entire bloody intersection because the light’s green when they get there, despite the other light being red as blood and the amount of traffic waiting to get on the freeway being clearly visible.
But sometimes there’s an overflow of mouthbreathers on the back way, too. *sigh*
I got home without incident, ate my plain burger and small fries, and thanked the gods I didn’t have to go ANYWHERE ELSE today. I’m just not fit to be out in public. Despite having lovely patient teachers (aka my children) I am not a very patient person, and what little I have is reserved for the people I love, not idiot jacka$$ses on the street.
Anyway, I am home. I have a whole evening to read up on Latino gangs (thanks to Cavalaxis and others) and plug away at the works in progress. I don’t have to deal with the outside world. I can even intersperse work with reading Bukowski, because a misanthropic mood calls for Henry Chinaski in a big way.
Ah. It’s good to be home. Have a wonderful weekend, Readers. Noli te carborundum.
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