Well, Excuse Me!

      Yesterday afternoon, Mark has dragged me to the mall and is now finishing up grocery shopping at the Publix Store. We pull into one of the checkout counters and I unload our stuff as the cashier finishes with the lady in front of us. She's a forty something bleached blonde and is accompanied by her dumpy, tee shirt wearing, husband/boyfriend/baby daddy. Her groceries have now been bagged and put neatly in her cart as she now digs, digs, digs, in her purse for the means to pay. Finally she has finished her transaction and the cashier starts checking us out. Beep, beep, beep, the cashier is efficient and all the groceries have been rung up. At the end of the counter the bag boy is swiftly putting it all in the brown plastic bags, but he cannot put the bags into our cart. The cashier is done ringing us up, but Mark cannot move forward to the debit card doo-dad to pay. Miss Bleached Blonde is still blocking the end of the counter with her full grocery cart digging, and digging, and digging in her giant purse. For what I'm not sure, but in a lapse of judgment I blurt out two words.

            "Excuse me."

Miss Bleached Blonde looks up from tunneling through all the crap in her purse and says.

            "Patience boys. I'll just be a second."

            "It's already been a second, it's been minutes." I replied.

            "Well you'll just have to wait." She snipped as she continued fumbling with the purse. Finally she pushed her cart a few feet away and continued with her purse. As I push our cart out past her I look straight ahead, not wanting to keep the unpleasantness going. Behind me a few feet is Mark and from back there I hear his voice loud and clear.

            "Fuck you!"

It seems that as he walked by Miss Bleached Blonde, she called Mark a fruitloop.

            What has happened to this country? When did people start behaving like boorish lunatics? Why do so many feel that they can say whatever they want, to whoever they want? Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Miss Bleached Blonde had a gun in that oversized bag. Guns make people feel invulnerable and free to stand up to people when no standing up is necessary.  But it can't just be the guns. Possibly it's the cable news networks that feature people insulting and yelling at each other all the time. Or, it could be the internet where trolls on news sites spend hours in the comments section calling each other names. Anyway, I'm sorry that she didn't call me a fruitloop and saved that for when Mark walked by. Because I had a comeback all loaded and ready to go, and it was far more pithy than Mark's "Fuck you". I was going to call her "Trailer Park" if she had opened her big yap at me...  or c##t. I might have called her a c##t if I had a chance.