AAARRGGHHH!

Posted by Mark Chapman on March 6th, 2010 at 1:46 am

The Engle­wood Entity

By Semaj Itrebur

The Engle­wood Entity

Have you suf­fered from other than the weather these last few weeks? Hmmm?

The term “bru­tal” has been bruited about of late as it per­tains to human behav­ior as well you know. How­ever, as an avowed inno­cent, I’ll blame the weather for the indig­ni­ties recently endured at the hands of my fel­low unfortunates.

As the tem­per­a­tures fell and the wind veloc­ity increased, their fuses per­cep­ti­bly short­ened. I count myself lucky to have sur­vived (thus far) the assaults on my per­son: ver­bal and phys­i­cal. These encoun­ters were unpro­voked and I still mar­vel at the var­ied sources from which they issued.

The first inci­dent occurred while I was in line at a Pub­lix reg­is­ter. The petite, well-dressed and decid­edly non-combatant matron behind me jammed her bur­dened car­riage into and almost through my left achilles ten­don — OUCH! When I protested, she told me to grow up and get on with my check out. Grow up! I still have an ache down there five days later.

In a Wal­mart lot, I inad­ver­tently drove IN the OUT lane. You should have been there. I was heartily berated by at least five onlook­ers, again by indi­vid­u­als who at least looked like they should have known bet­ter. I, of course, returned the compliments.

At lunch in a not-so-busy restau­rant in Venice, after an inter­minable wait in vain for recog­ni­tion, the man­ager yelled across the room: “Hey What do you expect? We’re shorthanded!”

A large, angry-looking woman rid­ing a motor­ized Scamp actu­ally smacked it into me in a remote Tar­get aisle. She drove that thing like a Dodge-em car. No com­ment, just boom, bang, gone. I assume I was in her way…

A strange but sooth­ing habit I have when here in Engle­wood is play­ing the sun­set down (Taps) with my slide whis­tle — when we have a sun­set. You don’t want to know the abuse I get for those harm­less few sec­onds of joy: BOO! HISS!  GO HOME! SHADDUP!!

Ani­mals.

In traf­fic on Beach Road on the Key I rec­og­nized a friend, slowed, said hello — and a few brief words — did not stop. But I got an ear­ful of horn and voice from the car behind me, and, as they passed, a silent dig­i­tal greet­ing from the distaff passenger!

I don’t know how many times I’ve got­ten The Face from those who made the assump­tion that I some­how had imposed on their nobil­ity. The insult doesn’t have to be ver­bally deliv­ered — you are aware of that. One of the most bla­tant insults absorbed in this brief period was by a vis­i­tor who brought his com­puter with him and stuck his face in it for most of the time spent with us. Unconscionable.

Ill humor is par­tially a prod­uct of frus­tra­tion. We all know that and we all share that in quan­tity of late. With that in mind, and know­ing that this %$#@^&*& weather will soon break, I’ll try my best not to vent my spleen on some other unsus­pect­ing innocent.

Go in peace (pax vobiscum).

And, while you’re at it – be nice.

The Engle­wood Entity is a sea­sonal Engle­wood resident.

You can comment on this story below.

If you want to link to this post from your site, use this trackback link.

Leave a reply:

You must be logged in to post a comment.