I got home less than an hour ago. I came in, pulled out the laptop, grabbed some coffee, whooped the Artificial Intelligence, Mavis, who acts as the opponent in computer Scrabble, and just generally tried to calm the hell down.
You see, gentle reader, I was walking back over here, waiting at the light to cross El Camino Real, smoking my cigarette, and generally resting in the uneasy afterglow of a session with my shrink. As I stood there, awaiting the light, this woman in shiny, black, very expensive car comes to a stop in the turn lane.
Actually, to paint a proper picture of the matter, she stopped, very slowly, in such a way as to, with an almost mathematical precision, block the entire cross-walk ahead of me.
As a terminal pedestrian there are few things that piss me off more than drivers blocking cross-walks & sidewalks. I'm sure Arlette would be happy to tell you stories about me yelling at people in cars who have stopped for a turn, right across a sidewalk.
So here I am, with some well-monied mutant creating a situation where I will have to either walk out into traffic to get across the street, or walk around, behind her, navigating the other stopped cars. Not looking so good, right? It gets better.
You see, before I even got to the cross-walk, to press the button for the signal, a man in a wheelchair, with his friend pushing him, came up to cross the street, on the opposite side.
Oh yeah... oh yeah. I'm ready to scrap.
But then I think of OZ. No, I do not mean Dorothy & the Scarecrow, I mean Adebisi & Schillinger. I don't want to go to prison.
Fuck.
I really don't want to go to prison, but I really, really do want to kick her fucking window in, & punch her in her arrogant face.
Finally the light changes. She doesn't so much as bat an eye as the guy in the wheelchair waves and smiles at her as his friend pushes him into the line of danger, to circumnavigate her car. I smile at them as we cross paths, then I look at her, and point with my cigarette, grinding out, very loudly, "You do you realize that you're completely blocking the crosswalk, yes?"
And the arrogant bitch just nods her acknowledgement, wearing an expression which rests somewhere between bemused disinterest, and a disgust, as though I've just farted on her pillow.
I would now like to take this moment to fervently, desperately hope that this inexcusable waste of hydrogen, disguised as a woman, one day realizes that she owes her life to Tom Fontana.
I, for one, am all too aware that I owe my life to him.
Thank you, Tom Fontana. Thank you.
