M'mm Good, M'mm Good...

Over the summer, while Dan has been at home with Max and I've been at work, we've gotten into the habit of grocery shopping on Monday nights after I get home. The grocery store is relatively uncrowded and Max needs to get out of the house.

Tonight I witnessed one of the truly most appalling displays of rudeness I think I've ever seen. As Dan and I were coming out of the grocery store, right in front of us, a woman had stopped her car, one of those giant Dodge Whatchamacallit station wagons, partially angled back toward an occupied parking spot. She had gotten out of her car, and she was clearly toward the end of a pregnancy with what I can only hope was twins.

As we were walking towards the parking lot, she started calling to a man who we couldn't see from where we were standing, because he hadn't gotten out of his car yet. "Excuse me, sir?" she called. "Sir? I was backing into that spot. Sir? Sir?"

I will be the first to admit that I don't understand the phenomena of backing into parking spots, which is all the rage here. I have never backed into a parking spot in my life unless I was stalking some boy and thought I might have to make a quick getaway. And yet, probably fifty times since we moved to Maryland, I've been following someone through a crowded parking lot and been just about to drop to my knees in gratitude as they passed the one last unoccupied spot in the entire lot without pulling in, only to have them stop short, and have to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting them as they throw their car into reverse and back into the spot that I thought they were passing up.

The man who she was calling to was a middle-aged white man, driving a big grey Mercury sedan. He waved cheerfully at her, as though she was commenting on what a blue sky and fresh breeze was blowing today, calmly ignoring her and went stalking into the store, right past Dan and I. She shook her head, stuffed herself back into her car, and took the next available spot, which was easily another hundred yards out in the lot, as opposed to the spot that Old Fart appropriated for his own use, which was the second spot in the lot.

I was totally outraged on this woman's behalf. "Cocksucker," is what I said, plenty loud enough for the old fart to hear me, and glaring openly in his direction.

Dan is always horrified when I become openly profane and confrontational, but he didn't seem like the type to follow a thirty-something yuppie woman and soundly kick her ass in front of her husband and three-year-old son. Nevertheless, he shushed me with the consternation that I've come to fully expect from my husband.

As I continued to rage against middle-aged white men everywhere (I can't remember what exactly I said, but the name John McCain and the term "ignorant-ass John Birch Society member" may have been mentioned more than once) while we put groceries in the car, Dan snickered to himself. "Too bad Campbell's not here," he said.

"Who's Campbell?" I said, pausing in my red-faced rant against Republicans and Other Bad People.

"He's this guy I knew growing up," he said. Dan grew up in a northern Michigan town on Lake Michigan which grew from about 8,000 year-round residents to about 80,000 tourists every summer, famously snarling traffic, crowding sidewalks and beaches, and in general, lacking in courtesy or couth of any kind, earning the nickname "fudgies" for the massive quantities of fudge that they bought and consumed. "Campbell used to carry a bottle of pee in his car. And any time a fudgie would cut him off in traffic, he would follow them and wait until they parked their car and walked away, and then he'd pour the pee all over the inside of their car."

It was, as you might anticipate, the first time that I regretted not having a bottle of pee in my minivan, and that I didn't even have to go a little bit, as I did notice that Old Fart had unwisely left his window open. I briefly contemplated dropping a couple of eggs through the window, but Dan, in his infinite wisdom and as the better person and party-pooper in this relationship, wouldn't hear of it.

In the time that it took us to load up our groceries, for me to load Max into his car seat, and for Dan to return the cart, Old Fart came out with his Evil Cocktail Mix or his loaf of Craphole Bread or whatever he went in for and got into his car. I backed out of my parking spot and blocked him into his. "Molly," Dan said in his best I'm-Warning-You voice.

I waved cheerfully at Old Fart. He waved cheerfully back, clearly not recognizing me as the person who'd called him a cocksucker not five minutes earlier. I rolled down my window, and he did the same. "Hey Asshole," I called. "God saw you take that parking spot." The smile fell off his face. "And He thinks your car is ugly."

I drove off feeling vindicated, despite the fact that I hadn't come up with anything better than my ka-ka-head poo-poo-face school of insult-hurling.

But as God is my witness, I'm going to get a funnel and an old 2-liter bottle. And Campbell is going to be my new role model in childish revenge schemes carried out on other people's behalf.