Thursday, May 22, 2008

Scary Guy Pills, Part 2.

It's one of my older stories, but still a goody.

I lived in central phoenix after college. Not quite the suburbs if you know what I mean.

One day at lunch, I ran out to the bank to put in a deposit. I had to turn left into the bank and there was a lot of traffic. I pulled in the middle lane to wait for my turn. When I pulled into the lane, I was face to face with another car who was waiting for his turn to go. I assumed (wrongly) that he was waiting to turn left also.

I don't know how it is in all states, but in Arizona, it's illegal to use the turning lane as a merging lane. You use the lane to turn left. Period. Not to to merge into it first, wait for a space, and then continue to go forward. See, I used to get a lot of tickets in my teenage years and I've been to traffic school ~a lot~.

When oncoming traffic cleared, I went to turn left. At the same time, the guy who was facing me in the turning lane, went to merge into traffic, so he almost hit me. Yeah, he was in the lane first, but since he was making an illegal maneuver, I had the right of way, so I flipped him off (as anyone in Phoenix would do) and continued on my turn into the bank.

There I was, waiting my turn in the drive through. I was up at the little tube thingy, putting in my deposit, and I notice the same car drive through a closed bank lane and park perpendicular to the exit of my lane, blocking me in. This huge black guy comes out (doesn't make any difference to the story that the guy was black. But I was a little tiny white girl, so he was that much more intimidating to me) and starts screaming at me.

The whole bank is watching.

I want to look at "cool" as possible, so I start smart mouthing the guy, even though I should of just apologized so he would cool down. While he's barraging me with curse words, I'm smiling as big as possible, nodding my head saying "uh-huh. You don't say? Really? Wow." This is infuriating him even more. But I persist.

As he basically runs out of curse words and is silent for more than a second, I look to him and say "Are you done? Cause if you are, maybe you should run home and take some more Scary Guy Pills."

No fucking clue where that came from. But I was quite happy with how it sounded. Rarely do you get a good "come back" in the moment.

At that, he stopped, cocked his head in confusion, put his left hand on the opening of my open car window and with his right hand, punched me directly in the face.

Things go black.

I woke up to 1) blinding pain in my face 2) about every male customer on top of this guy, keeping him away from me and 3) the entire bank in the drive through window watching the melee. Awesome.

The guy stood up and the men stayed between me and him. He did some more cursing and got into his car and left. Police were called who gave me a lecture for getting into a confrontation with the man to begin with - scolding me over the idea "what if he had a gun?". Well, he didn't have a gun and he punched me. Can we focus on that? I'm the victim here!

The car ended up being stolen and they never found the guy. I had a wicked black eye and bruised cheekbone. And my mom was right - some day my mouth WAS going to get me into trouble.

14 comments:

Io said...

Oh god, my face hurts just reading this! good comeback though.
I've been off having my funk, so I don't think I told you - congratulations on your pregnancy! I'm so happy for you.

Jamie said...

That story is freaking hysterical!! I don't even know you, but somehow I can still picture it all in my head.

Chastity said...

What?! I've never been punched anywhere mush less in the face....you're so lucky that's all he did!

Lori Lavender Luz said...

So, in such a case, how much time has to elapse before the incident becomes funny?

I'm laughing, but I'm sure it wasn't funny at the time.

Great comeback, on paper anyway!

jenn said...

oh.my.god!! That is an honest to god fear of mine- I thought it was maybe irrational before- but now I'm definitely watching what I do in my car from now on!

Anonymous said...

Yeowch! I'm just imagining how painful that must have been! But you know ... I'd say it was worth it just to have been able to have such a great smart a** comment!!

Antigone said...

Wow. That tops anything I've got.

Anonymous said...

OMG...I didn't expect that.

~mmj

It keeps saying my freaking password is wrong, but I reset it everytime to the same damn thing! UGH.

Aimee said...

Hysterical!! So sorry that happened to you!!! What a total loser. A similar incident happened to me recently when I was on my way to pick up my daughter from daycare. A guy cut me off and I almost hit him and he pulls up and starts yelling at me when it was clearly his fault!! Well I yelled back! He followed me into the daycare so I quickly did a u-turn and than continued to follow me around town for 30 min!! I called the cops and he took off as soon as he saw them. Geez...there are some serious insane members of society!!

P.S. Congrats on your BPF!! I'm so very happy for you! I seriously rooting for ya. I'm going for my 1st FET in July.

Agata said...

OH MY GOD............. I don't know whether to laugh or shake my head in disbelief. You always have the best stories - and thankfully you always come out ok. Beat up, maybe, but ok.

And great comeback. LMAO

Kaci said...

Wow! Great comeback, great story!

Birdee said...

I love that story, I remember you telling a while back ago and ever since then, when I'm faced with the opportunity for that kind of confrontation, I just think of you and my self "Nancy Balls Today?" smile - - AND THEN KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT!. LMAO. Your so cute.

Jess NBP said...

OH MAN!! OUCHIE!! but that was funny.

Sabrina said...

Very funny story, only because it ended up relatively OK. Nobody dead. Also, nicely written. Spare but compelling.

However, can I make one request? Can you refrain from reinforcing the old racist stereotype of the big scary black man vs. the helpless tiny white woman? It bugs, seriously. And this is from a tiny white woman. All it does is reinforce shit in people's heads, and it won't help your children to see "big black men" as non-scary in the future. We all carry this stuff we learned very early on, to our detriment. You could just as easily have said, "This 200 lb angry-looking man with clenched fists and an enraged expression approached my car" and it would have been equally powerful, but not laden with racist undertones.

Otherwise, I love your blog and what you have to say!!!