malfunction
Do you ever have one of those mornings where you think, “Nothing. None of this is working. I must quit everything?” And I recognize that that statement sounds very woeful, but I’m coming from a very frustrated, irritated point of view in which my willingness to give a shit has simply ceased.
See, the husband’s classes started up again today and suckily enough he has a 9 a.m. class on Mondays and Wednesdays. 9 a.m. classes don’t go over very well in our family because a) we’re not morning people, b) the baby’s bus sometimes doesn’t arrive until 8:30, and c) we live in a cheap part of town, meaning we sacrificed convenience and are usually faced with horrendous traffic. Added to all of that is the fact that one of the main boulevards in Pittsburgh is closed for the next year for repairs, so our usual morning commute clusterfuck has been replaced with the new ’08 model clusterfuck: The Motherf@($*#((%@)$%*%))@!!!!one! 3000.
This morning, we gritted our teeth through the traffic which was way worse than usual, probably because all of the Pitt students are back in the mix. By the time we got to Oakland, it was about 8:58 and I still needed to be dropped off at work. So the husband was already seething and muttering about how we were going to have to radically alter this routine before Wednesday. We pulled up to a red light at the intersection of Forbes and Craig, right in between Starbucks and Kiva Han, the cool indie coffee shop where all of the English and film majors and white Zapatistas go and say cool things like, “Yeah, me too.” *
So, we’re sitting at the red light and all of the artsy and academic types that populate Oakland are blearily shuffling on the sidewalks, absorbing the Mondayness of it all. And the light changes to green. And then this fucking shithead starts to cross the street. Very. Slowly. And he had timed it so that he was walking right in front of our car as the light turned green. And he has his Starbucks cup and his backpack and his floppy hair and just totally did not care that it’s 9 a.m. on a Monday morning and people have to be places because he only has to drink coffee and be a shithead. The husband laid on the horn because what the fuck?
Then. That kid. Spit. At. Our. Car.
The husband rolled down the window and screamed a string of obscenities at him. Ordinarily, I would have tried to reign him in a bit but that kid totally deserved it. And all of the artsy and academic types looked up, startled, and were probably irritated with us but whatever.
The 9 a.m. class. The traffic. The closed boulevard. The Starbucks-spitting shitheads. The lack of apostrophes.
I want them all to die.
Happy Monday!
* Louis C.K.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Oh. My. Gawd. I hate nothing more than people who think “I have the right away. I don’t care that the hand of The Man tells me I shouldn’t walk. I’m going to walk anyway.”
I would have spit back.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
That is definitely teh suck. I hope you guys can work something out so you don’t end up murdering each other or any white Zapatistas.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
My god are you going to have to do this every week? That totally sucks.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
O. M. F. G.
Nothing sends me into orbit faster than the folks that like to exert their “pedestrian power” over you by walking as slowly as fucking possible. I’ve had a group of guys walk diagonally across the street for maximum effect.
I used to think it was just plain rudeness, but I’ve come to think that there’s something more behind it…some sort of subtle cultural statement about the ability to exert even this small amount of power over a member of who the pedestrian views to be a member of the “ruling class”….if for no other reason than because you have a vehicle and they don’t.
I haven’t put my finger on it exactly, but when I get closer to an answer, we’ll have to have a pow-wow about it….’cause I go into “atomic bomb” mode every time that shit happens, and I don’t want to go to jail for mowing down a pedestrian, no matter how much he may deserve it.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
My husband works in Shadyside and I pray to the gods that he never locks his keys in his car again, forgets his laptop or forgets his teaching stuff (he’s a part-time Prof at Pitt) because I am NOT driving there in the traffic to get him that shizz. I love Oakland, but hate the traffic.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Horrid. But at least you won this week’s (already, on a Monday, you are so good!) Golden Commenter award for your MamaPop comment. Bad news again, though, there is no prize. No spit, though, only glory.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
The pedestrians of the Pacific Northwest are enough to make me scream. They mosey across the street without a care in the world, just as smug and self-satisfied as they can be that their carbon footprint is smaller than mine.
Argh.
January 8th, 2008 at 4:15 am
I never did get the idea of those who walk directly in front of cars (like in, say, East Baltimore). You did that in the city in my day, back when rocks were soft, and you were asking to be a fucking statistic. Somewhere along the line, it became a macho point of pride to cause an SUV or something like it to squeal their tires directly in the few meters or so leading up to your person while you sashay across the road like nothing just happened and you were not nearly killed. People like this should be sent to Iraq to walk down the street looking for IEDs, because they can apparently do so without spilling their Starbuck’s. Until they’re successful at their jobs, that is.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Blog Starr, thank you very much!
commiserators, thanks for the sympathy. I will admit to being a smug pedestrian, but I’ve never pulled some bullshit like that kid did. there’s making a statement and then there’s just being a choad. and he was a choad.