Rude People

So I’m standing outside of the Roost having a smoke with a lady friend when we’re approached by a stick of a woman wearing a dull coat as thick as her English accent. She smiles and bends slightly at the waist as if talking to a child and asks my friend, “are you a hooker?” This, of course, leaves us speechless. The foreigner continues, “do you like being called a mooshpin?”

“I’m sorry?” I asked but she didn’t look at me, she kept her beady eyes locked on my friend as if trying to melt her with her sight.

“In England the . . . ,” she continued, sounding as though she was speaking with a sack of marbles lodged in her mouth and with censure in her tone. I blew smoke into her face before pushing my friend back into the bar.

We went out half an hour later for another smoke and the crazy bitch was standing on the corner near the bar. She kept her eyes on my friend.

“Is there a problem,” I asked her.

“No, no problem.”

“Are you sure?” I asked again, drunk with liquor and vengeance. I pulled my friend behind me with my arm around her waist and stared into the rude bitch’s empty, beady eyes, blowing smoke in her direction.

“No, there’s no problem,” she said before walking across the street. I ran across behind her and demanded an apology. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” I said. She began walking away and I noticed she turned around and glanced at my friend. The gall. She turned her head quickly and I ran up to her and greeted the small of her back with a movie-style jump kick that sent her a few feet forward. I karate chopped her shoulder, she collapsed and I spit on the ground beside her and put out my cigarette in her hair.

Doesn’t she realize it’s rude to stare? And almost just as rude to call someone a hooker?

The next story takes place on the freeway. My friend and I were on the 110, driving north on the right most lane that merges with an on ramp. A red pickup pulls up behind us, then to our right to try and pass us. Rude. My friend speeds up and doesn’t allow the pickup to pull ahead. He reaches 120 and the red pickup disappears behind us. Two minutes later, the pickup attempts the same stunt but is again foiled. Rude! The third time it happens, I think the jerk wants to have some fun—a few races a few laughs—so I turn my head to smile and notice the two barrels of a shotgun being cocked and pointed at my face. Rude!

It’s the rudest thing that’s ever happened to me.

I lower the window, reach for the pickup’s tire and pull it off sending it into a hellish fishtail across all four lanes. I lob the tire behind us into the pickup’s cab where it detonates, creating a mushroom cloud dwarfing the buildings downtown. Rude.

This all really happened (even the shotgun) except for the wanton and needless violence.