If you're one of "those people" (and I hope you are) that others have branded as "uptight" just because you happen to have standards of basic decorum that rise above sea level, you've had
one of
those moments when you
wanted to say something, anything, about someone else's
bad behavior in public, even though, technically there's no law against the activity you were witness to (against your will), and you just
couldn't find the right words on the spur of the moment to get your point across. And, as you've heard a million times before, the minute you try to point out that
breaches in decorum do have
negative side effects on the average variable
civility quotient, here in North America someone always stands up and hollers: "
It's a free country, bub, don't tread on me!" and "
Who are you to impose your morality on the rest of us?" But this time, you were pushed over the edge, for whatever reason. Oh, maybe it was something as simple as a few folks (probably young, restless and festive junebugs) talking throughout a seriously intense movie that you were
trying to enjoy - i.e. pay close attention to - with them checking their lighted cell-phones in the dark; or perhaps someone was belting out one of your
least favorite songs - a cacophonous screech-fest of a tune - while cutting in front of you in line somewhere, and you didn't really appreciate that maneuver, so you sighed loudly and groaned audibly but to no avail. Hey (what the other person did) - it's not a felony - am I right? Or perhaps it was that menacing group of "youths" (a.k.a derelicts, a.k.a hoodlums) who were moving rapidly in your direction, knocking over merchandise as they grazed past your torso with their hard-to-miss stone-cold stares and drug-infested bravado. (I'd be surprised if they didn't remind you that YOU were staring at THEM...what's your problem, bub?) Or maybe it was that crazed-looking fellow having a mysterious hygiene malfunction (involving hands, nose, mouth, lungs, arm pits, pant legs, who knows?) that you thought might lead, somewhere down the line, to you contracting malaria or even worse (although the mere thought of
that gave you intense feelings of
guilt for even harboring such anxiety, despite the high empirical likelihood of that being the case), or perhaps it was that fractious, vituperative haggard-looking woman, off-duty from being a real parent, you know, the one with the perpetually bad attitude, who was continuously (operative word) - scolding and berating the uncomprehending toddler with the far-away look in her eyes; or the young hyper-active couple on crystal meth, making their way through the fabric store, looking for God-knows-what type of yarn, dropping F-bombs as they went and calling every clerk in the store by their first name (arrgh!), or that guy waltzing with the mop on aisle #6 at Walmart, and making weird noises. (Well - maybe weird to you, but who are you to judge?) And let's not forget people who don't watch what they're doing or where they're going and are trying (it seems) to run you over or bump into you in narrow shopping mall corridors or in crowded restaurants or at the Gap. They almost seem to overshadow the assorted loiterers among us, who, always, busy doing nothing in particular, can be seen, at regular intervals, milling about on side streets, whooping it up, having spontaneous parties and make-out sessions as they go, shouting and cavorting and losing most of their bodily inhibitions in parking lots or other open venues not designed for such exhibitionism. For me, it was being surrounded by a horde, nay a dangerous "flock," of hungry-looking shoppers, affectionately known otherwise as "pod-people," all reaching for, clutching at, those hideous yellow and green marshmallow candies, I mean those foamy, inedible, processed, padded-insulation-like candies (!) that I just can't ever seem to digest (!) - and their hands reaching out in unison, grabbing blindly at me, mistaking me (!) for one of those squishy packages (!) - having to absorb numerous "gropings" without making a peep - for a good cause at least (?) - this all happening at a certain time of year (a time that is typically referred to as "Easter," although out of respect for the Almighty, I'd prefer to instead to call it the "first-glimpse-of-spring equinox shopping corridor") and me looking for the green and yellow "plastic grass stuffing" to fill baskets with so as to hold the Cadbury chocolate along with something that I could digest, and feeling really down about the whole ordeal and wanting to scream (
What are we all doing here in this forlorn, god-forsaken warehouse pretending like we're celebrating some profound, sacred holiday???) Come to think of it, this also happened at a Walmart store. Could it be? Do you see a common thread developing here? But some would say that I'm just a highly sensitive person, and that episodes like these come and go, so there's nothing to be done about it....
