There’s something about the parking lot where the Ralphs is on Glendale Boulevard in Silver Lake that makes people silly. A couple years ago I apparently wasn’t crossing in front of a stopped car fast enough because when I’d barely gotten by the driver gunned it past me and flipped me off and when I shrugged a WTF!? at him as he glared at me in his rear view he slammed on the brakes and made like he was going to open the driver’s side door but remembered what a chickenshit he was and kept on going when I took off towards his car ready for whatever rumble might have awaited us.
Then today coming across the lot in my car, southbound on the right side of the parking lot lane with a two cars coming northbound, the trailing car without reason or need justs pulls directly in front of me as if to go around the lead car, but then doesn’t and just stops. And so does the lead car who’s now waiting at my 10 o’clock for a car behind me that’s pulling out of a space.
Does Car No. 2 pull back in behind Car No. 1 so I can go by? No. Does Car No. 2 stop? No. Instead Car No. 2 keeps coming toward me until there’s only about 15 feet between our front bumpers. Then she stops. And now I have to wait for Car No. 1 — who’s doing nothing wrong — to wait for the car to exit the space behind me. When that happens does Car No. 2 then pull back to the right? No. She sits there barely moving and entirely unwilling or unable to acknowledge she’s sorry or a tard until I opt to go to my left and around her and as I do I give her a smarmy look and say mostly to myself in my closed up cab with the A/C and Sirius radio going full blast: “This isn’t England ya know!”
Not the cleverest thing, but hey.
And she responds how? Of course by fully animating in a nanosecond as if someone hit an on switch. In the blink of an eye she went from comatose or overdosed to sitting fully upright and jetting her arm out in a full-thrust extension toward me upon the end of which stretches one of the most adamant middle fingers I’ve ever been given. You’d think I’d just insulted her mother or her hair color. And for added emphasis she yells “fuck off!” for all she’s worth and loud enough for me to hear in my closed up cab with the A/C and Sirius radio going full blast.
And then I did this remarkable thing: instead of going ballistic I laughed at her and shrugged at her irate over-reaction and just kept on going to a space up ahead where I parked and got out. I laughed even harder when I saw she’d done the same thing and was glaring at me with eyes in a head that barely cleared the top of the door frame of her sports car. Seriously if she was five-feet tall then I’m a hipster. King of the hipsters.
To make things even more ludicrous, she was damaged. I mean physically. As she got out in the open, headed thankfully for some other venue besides Ralphs where I was going, Ms. Gimpy walked with a pronounced limp.
As timing would have it as I was on my way out of the market she was also heading back to her car from wherever she’d been, limping and a-glaring at me and so ready to open a can of badmouth on my ass. I just shook my head and kept on going.
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