In Which my bad mood leads me to behave in a most unmannerly fashion
First, I posted at the League of Reluctant Adults blog, about what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving.
So here's what happened.
It's raining today. So after I picked Princess up from school we're walking along the gravel road that serves as a parking lot, and we're sticking fairly close to the cars because there's a lot of puddles and I'd rather the girls not get their legs and feet wet (we're all wearing raincoats.)
There are two cars left to pass before we get to ours. The first is a red minivan kind of thing, and the woman who owns it is loading her kids in. All her kids are standing in the fairly narrow space between her car and the blue car next to it, beyond which is mine.
We wait, but she sees us and steps back a bit so we can pass. At which point, Blue Car Woman starts backing up and almost runs over Princess.
I yank Princess back. Blue Car Woman has stopped. I yell, "Hey! You almost hit my child!"
She sits there another minute, then rolls down her window. So I say it again. "You almost hit my child, were you even looking where you were going?"
She says, snippily, "Yes, I was."
Me: "Well, you weren't doing a very good job of it, because you almost hit my child."
She: "Do you drive a car?"
Me (who knows good and damn well what inspired THAT little comment, and it has to do with me not pronouncing "can't" as "cahn't": "Yes, I do, I drive every day, and I certainly know how to use my mirrors. This is a school, you fucking moron, you need to be more careful."
She starts to say something else, but I say, "Oh, fuck off," and turn away. So she pulls back into her spot. I wait for her to pull out. She is apparently waiting for me to walk behind her, as if I'd give her another shot at my kids. Finally she rolls down her window and I say, "Are you going to go, or what?"
And she--I still can't believe this--crinkles up her snotty little face and says, "Are you going to stand there, or what?" Yes, that's right. I was mimicked by a grown woman.
It goes a little hazy there. I'm sure I told her she should go because I wouldn't walk behind her car again. I suspect I called her a fucking bitch. I know I told her all she'd needed to do was apologize, and she should be more careful in future.
She started to pull away, yelling something unintelligble about how I should wash my car because it "looks disgusting" (it's RAINING and has for days), to which I gave her the finger.
I'm not proud of it...but if I had to do it again I probably would have been even nastier. I cannot believe she almost hit MY child with HER car and had the nerve to act as though something was wrong with ME for saying something to her about it. What if she had hit her? Should I have let that go too? It's a school parking lot, you need to be careful. My daughter was in a white raincoat.
Grrrrrr...
Unholy Ghosts
New Words: 5,205 (in three days or so again)
Total wordcount: 50,002
The Good: Remembering someone else thinks we’re brave gives us the strength to be brave, aaaw.
The Bad: Library stalkers, terrified in pitch darkness.
The Gross: Decaying bodies in a tunnel
The rampant drug use: a little speed, a pill or two
Location: Library, platform of the train to the City of the Dead, tunnels under the regular city
Downspeech: Hardly any speech at all-I’m a little worried about that
I Hate My Work: You’ve tried to make this taut and scary, but everyone’s going to hate it, aren’t they?