Previously I said that my
conscience is the thing that keeps me from being an asshole. But it doesn’t
seem to always do its job. Either my conscience is pretty weak or I’m just such
a huge asshole that no conscience can contain me, because the other day I
definitely found myself being quite the asshole.
For as long
as I can remember I have been attending this annual weekend long music festival
right outside my hometown. For hours I sit outside, hot and sweaty, under the
beaming June sun surrounded by other hot and sweaty people, all of whom are
eating various fried foods and are themselves being eaten by various
mosquitoes. Normally I would never attend an event that matches this
description, but somehow, every year, I find myself there. It’s like I’m one of
those flamingoes that tries to fly south for the winter but somehow ends up in
northern Russia being fed vodka and petted by some guy named Yakov. Except in
my case I’m fed corn dogs and “accidentally” groped by that creepy guy while in
line for the port-o-potties.
As my friend and I walked into the concert on Saturday evening
we saw the group we were meeting sitting together in lawn chairs. There was
just enough space for the two of us to sit down next to them. The only problem
was that there was a middle aged couple sitting on the ground about five feet
behind where we wanted to sit.
“Well, we could sit there,” my friend said, “but I don’t want to
sit right in front of those people.”
Now, here’s where my conscience failed and the asshole was let
out. My response to my friend’s concern was a shrug as I simply said, “I don’t
care.”
We
proceeded to set up our chairs next to our friends and sat down. After about
five minutes I knew the couple behind us was pissed. I could practically feel
the waves of self-righteous fury coming off of the man as he muttered, “Some
people…” and “I’m just gonna bite my tongue…” Finally, the couple got up to
leave, but first the man felt it necessary to let us know his displeasure. He
stood up, leaned forward and furiously whispered into my friend’s ear, “You
know, you should tell people before you sit down in front of them.”
Now, I may have been an asshole by sitting in front of him, but
this guy’s argument made no sense. It would have been fine for us to sit in
front of him as long as we had asked first? The problem wasn’t that we blocked
his view; it was that we hadn’t awkwardly asked permission to do so first.
Really, we had been considerate by proceeding to sit in front of him thereby
skipping over the awkward middle step. Either way, my friend and I would have
ended up sitting in front of him. I’m sure this whispered outburst was as
aggressive as this tie-dye wearing, pierced eared, be-ponytailed man had been
in years. Based on the smug little smile on his face, I’m also sure he thought
we would be too shocked and shamed to respond to him. But when a major douche
like that thinks he has just somehow one-upped me, I can’t stand it. I turned
around and said to him, “Man, it’s not that big of a deal. Just go away.”
In my opinion, when somebody tells you to “just go away” the
best move is probably to just go away. However, my comment only served to
further enrage the sanctimonious couple.
“Well,” said the woman, “and I was going to call him rude.” She indicated her
boyfriend/husband/life partner/ weird mid-life crisis fuck buddy. The man
sputtered in rage. He could not believe, could not believe, that somebody had actually responded to his
condescending little remark. After a few seconds he began to say, “It’s
P-O-L-I-T-E” over and over again as if somehow knowing how to spell an
adjective endows one with the qualities of said adjective. I mean, it would be
awesome if that were the case. I would walk around saying “B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T,”
and “C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-T,” and “N-O-T S-O-C-I-A-L-L-y R-E-T-A-R-D-E-D”. Alas,
that is not how the world works. So, understandably, my friend and I could not
figure out why this guy was spelling the word polite at us. He was almost
chanting it as though he was a priest trying to exorcise the evil demon of
rudeness that he seemed to believe had possessed our bodies. After a few
moments of the world’s most absurd spelling bee, the couple walked away. I
immediately turned to my friends.
“So, it was okay for him to be rude to me, but I wasn’t allowed
to be rude back to him? How does that make sense?” I thought this was an
excellent point and spent the rest of the night scanning the crowd for the
couple so I could point it out to them. I never did see them again and never
got to throw my very valid point in their ever increasingly wrinkled faces.
Needless to say, I was so focused on finding the couple in the crowd that I
didn’t pay any attention to the music that night. I still have no clue who played.
Okay, so being an asshole may have ruined my night, but the tie-dye guy had been
an asshole too, so I take some comfort in knowing his night was probably ruined
as well.
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