I Am So Popular: My Lengthy Engagement
Editor’s note: The views expressed in I Am So Popular are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook or beliefs of anyone else in the IST network.
On the topic of engagement, Warren and I have nearly opposite opinions. He is completely opposed to the idea. I, on the other hand, while not exactly a lobbyist for the cause, can’t seem to resist the idea that engagement is the way to go. Things sometimes get touchy when he sees that engagement fire in my eyes. And he knows, if he tries to get me to see things his way… well, let’s just say he has come to accept that trying to stop me usually just pours accelerant on the flames.
The engagement of which I speak isn't the sort that culminates in a big white dress, tuxedo, and multi-tiered cake. But there is an exchange of passionate words and, at least on my part, some vows at the end. Those vows usually go something like this, “I have got to stop doing that. But goddammit all these fuckers keep pissing me off.”
Mostly, these engagements sneak up on me. Often, they hinge on the fact that I am a lunatic magnet. I can be walking down the street minding my own business when, out of the blue, some mentally fragile, overly aggressive nut job will accost me. Some just wish to be listened to. I have had more perfect strangers unload their life stories on me, unbidden, than some therapists have heard in a forty-year practice. These experiences wear me out, but I try to remember all the times I needed to cathartically tell my own story, to heal, to let off steam, or just because.
But another breed of the unstable invariably undo me in an instant. They don’t want to merely engage me in their life stories. They want to engage me in their annoying bullshit.
Example: the other day, I wander into Walgreen’s. I’m minding my own business. I’m wrapping up a phone call with Warren. In fact, I stop, inside the store, and step off to the side to finish the call, because I cannot both shop and talk on the phone. I’m actually in the middle of this sentence, “I’m in Walgreen’s now and I’m going to hang up so I can focus so I’ll call you back…” When an elderly couple approaches, noses their cart within an inch of my physical being, and the engagement begins.
“Excuse me,” the old woman says, but not politely. I have two choices here, but unfortunately I won’t realize that until after the fact. Because she has gotten in my personal space, and is trying to get me to move— despite the fact there is a football field’s worth of room to my right and she could easily maneuver around me— I take offense. The switch flips, “Engage engage engage!” flashes in my head. Instead of recognizing that these are obnoxious people and nothing I can do will ever change that so I might as well move and just forget about them— my second unrecognized-in-the-moment choice— I go to the trouble to point out that, hello, they can go around me.
The old man pipes up, something about how I can just go outside. Why do I want to punch his lights out? Why do I even care? We exchange words and then they leave. But I can’t put it down. I get the items I’ve come for, then, as in Jaws, I troll the aisles looking for them. I spot the old lady, filling her cart with Walgreen’s wine, which should tell me all I need to know about her. I approach her cart and, rather than walk around it, which I could easily do, I stop and announce the cart is blocking my path. This, of course, prolongs and exacerbates our engagement until, at last, like an expert boxer, she pulls a curious punch. She extends her hand and says, “Peace.”
I sort of fall for this. My blood is one degree below boiling, but I hear a voice in my head, one I discovered in therapy, that tells me to try to calm down. I accept her handshake tentatively. Then, bait and switch bitch that she is, she follows up with another rude comment. I spend the rest of the day fuming. Old lady: 1, Spike: 0.
These stories amuse and astonish Warren, who never even notices idiots like the old woman in the first place, which in the long run saves him an awful lot of time and energy. Not me. I run into them everywhere. Sometimes, I even initiate. There are two particular activities that I find so offensive, so utterly intolerable, that whenever I encounter them, I go for the jugular. The end result is always the same: I make others uncomfortable, I make myself uncomfortable, and I make whoever is with me uncomfortable. And yet, I can’t stop myself.
Every morning, I walk my dogs for an hour. Often enough, we come upon an off-leash dog, which is illegal where I walk. In fact, that’s one reason I choose the route I do. My leashed dogs— like most leashed dogs— do not do well in an off-leash-meets-on-leash situation. They go into pack mode and snarl and bark and, like me, demonstrate a real interest in engagement. Each time this happens, my adrenaline rushes and I confront the lawbreakers, pointing out they need to leash their beasts. In response, I get everything from blank stares to the proclamation that their dog is friendly.
This calls to mind a most excellent song by Matt the Electrician, My Dog, which captures the attitude of the anti-leash set. “My dog don’t bite—he’s as gentle as a butterfly.” Yeah, well guess what? My dogs do bite when rushed by a stranger-- human or canine. And if they rip off the face of your dog, or bite one of us as we attempt to disengage them, despite my law obeying ways, I’m going to be the one that catches hell for it. There are a dozen off-leash areas in this city and if it’s that important to you and your dog to go untethered, you need to take your ass to one of these locations.
But where would be the fun in that, right? Because for these folks, the thrill is in the arrogance, the very thing that is at the root of what sets me off time and time again. They think only of themselves and their animals and couldn’t care less about the rest of us.
Tying for first place with these fury-inducing assholes are the perfectly able-bodied handicapped parking spot hogs. I see this happen constantly at the post office where I receive my mail. The place is often packed, and the parking lot too tiny to accommodate the crowd. Rather than street park and walk a half block, some entitled jerk offs think it’s fine to either park directly in a handicapped spot, or in the non-lane (clearly marked) that’s supposed to be left clear for wheelchairs, or in a fire zone directly behind the designated slots, which has the effect of blocking in any disabled person legally parked or— if the spot is open— keeping them from accessing it.
Whenever this happens, I cannot— CANNOT— stop myself from walking into the post office, eyeballing the snaking line, and trying to spot the culprit. Then I inquire, loudly but semi-innocently, “Who owns the…” followed by a description of the car in question. Taken off guard, the owner will say, “I do.” At which point I shout, “Well you’re parked illegally and you’re blocking the handicapped spot.”
What good does this do? Not much. Usually I’ll get a lame excuse along the lines of, “I’m only there for a minute.” Certainly I can’t think of a time when someone responded with the truth, “Oh, I’m arrogant and in a hurry and I don’t give a shit about the disabled.” If I could get away with it, I’d skip the lecture and make short work of all four tires with an ice pick.
These ongoing run-ins leave me with predictable fallout. If we are, as some think, born to this world to learn a particular lesson or two, surely mine must be that I have got to learn to let it go, walk on, disengage (or don’t engage in the first place) and let karma take care of the idiots. Too, I must remind myself that I am hardly above reproach. I suppose we all break rules as it suits us and who among us hasn’t sneaked 25 items onto the checkout belt for the 20-items-and-less lane? Or taken something—be it a tangible item or advantage of another— when we shouldn’t have?
Longevity is in my genes, and odds are, barring unforeseen accident, I will live to be at least one hundred. Good thing, that. Because it’s going to take me at least as long to figure out that becoming engaged is hardly in my best interest. Never wrestle with the pigs, as they say. Because you both get dirty and the pigs love it.
Spike Gillespie hopes an off leash dog pees on your illegally parked car. She blogs for JetBlue, KnitBuzz, and her own damn self. She’s teaching writing workshops this fall. For more information go here.
