Ignoring jerks

Part of my problem is I am anti-social to the nth degree, I don’t necessarily consider it a problem, but I guess that is the problem. Society says I should be more out there, more involved. Go ahead, mingle. Make some new friends. The surgeon general just came out saying something about loneliness being as dangerous, and deadly, as smoking. If you’re lonely AND smoke, you’re really screwed.

On a typical day, I’d say I interact with two or three people. I would set the average at 2.6 people.

I always talk to my girlfriend, so that’s one.

My dad lives downstairs from me, but I don’t actually talk to him every day. He would say I go “weeks” without checking on him, but, at most, I may go two or three, or five, days without saying, “Hello. How are things?” So I’d count him as 0.7 people per day.

Every morning, I force myself to leave the house to get an iced coffee. Then I will go and sit at a park to listen to sports talk radio, mess around on my phone, and watch cute dogs. So usually I will go through the drive-thru at the local coffee shop unless less there are more than three cars in line. So that means I will say about ten words to the employee at the speaker to place my order and say “thank you.” I am still polite, after all. Sometimes I go inside, and if they have a self checkout kiosk, I usually use that. So on those days, I don’t talk to anyone when I get my coffee. So, let’s set that at 0.5 people per day.

Then, of course, there are days where I have to go to see a therapist or a doctor. Maybe once a week I will need to interact with my girlfriend’s family or, possibly, go watch a game over at a friend's house. So, let’s call those interactions “miscellaneous” and set it at 0.4 days.

Does that add up to 2.6?

So what happens on days when one of those 2.6 people I interact with really pisses me off. I write an article!

A couple of days ago, I went to Cumberland Farms for a cheap iced coffee (I am available for sponsorship opportunities, Cumberland Farms). The convenience store has one of those areas where you prepare your own iced coffee. Sometimes there are other customers making theirs, but you can avoid their glances, then you don’t even have to say, “Good morning.” The days you get one of those over talkative, overly friendly, cheery (or grouchy) old regulars that hang out all day there playing Keno, it is more of a challenge to avoid their radar. Checking out can be tricky, too, if the self checkout register is down (which happens often).

On this particular day, jackpot! Not a single customer was in the place when I walked in. As I stir my iced coffee, I looked around. The place was still empty. This was going to be an easy in-and-out. Maybe I will even get a lottery ticket on my way out. I am feeling frisky today. I'll talk to the clerk.

As I cap my drink, I see the entrance doors slide open and an old man with long gray, thinning, stringy hair makes his way slowly to the register.  It was still an easy decision to stand behind the old man and wait my turn, knowing I can’t purchase lottery tickets at the kiosk. Ah, but it is never easy. The old man is slowly pulling lottery tickets out of his jacket pockets to redeem. Then he decides he wants a newspaper and waddles his way to the newspaper stand halfway across the store. I say the hell with it. I don’t need a lottery ticket this bad so I head over to the kiosk to ring myself out. I see the clerk looking at his phone waiting for the old man to return. I decided to just ask him if I could purchase a lottery ticket at the kiosk, knowing that his register was tied up with this guy’s order. He says he is not sure but he rips off a couple of scratch tickets anyway and tries scanning them at my kiosk. No luck, no pun intended. I tell him it is ok, and that I know he is in the middle of a transaction, so I will finish paying for the coffee at the kiosk, and then pay for the tickets at the kid’s register after he is done with the old man.

Now by this time, unbeknownst to me, a line has begun to form behind me at the register. The old guy comes back with his newspaper and decides he wants to buy some cigarettes too. Now I have finished using the kiosk, which is right next to the register. I see the kid has my tickets in his hand waiting for my turn, but I am stuck in an awkward situation standing at the kiosk waiting to take the old man’s place. I can feel the eyes of the people in line on me, thinking I am preparing to cut the line.

After about another minute, the old guy has finally paid for his order and walked away. I apologize - to the next guy in line - as I slide over to pay for my tickets. I subtly sense that someone to my left is talking to me. I can’t make out the words as I have my AirPods in, but I can tell I don’t like the tone. I pull my left AirPod out and ask, “Excuse me?”

This burly, middle-aged construction worker, wearing a reflective vest, continues to mumble at me as he angrily taps the screen of the self checkout register, “I guess you own the world, right? You tied up the kiosk for five minutes and then cut the line? What makes you so special, you punk?”

I began to explain what happened but he was having none of it. The clerk even tried defending me to the guy, but we might as well have been speaking a foreign language.

“Jerks like you is what is wrong with this world. You’re a self-centered ass. You think both registers belong to you. The whole world revolves around you.”

I begin to feel my blood begin to boil like I have never had before. People that know me know that I am the most mild-mannered person you will ever meet. I’ve never gotten into a fist fight in my life, although I did get karate kicked in the face when I was a teenager. But as the guy was barking away, I felt the urge to take things to another level. It was a feeling I was unfamiliar with. The old me could have easily ignored this guy - just smirk at him, look away, and go on with my day. Two ships passing in the night. But not today. I wasn’t going to let this guy stand on his soap box and spew insults at me.

And that scared me and it got me thinking. If someone as mild-mannered as me could feel this desire to escalate this minor altercation into something more serious, what if I was someone more combatant? This is what we need to understand in any confrontation. It is the sad reality. You just never know who you are messing with. You never know what people are going through. You never know how much, or how little that person values life - his and yours.

Usually that thought goes through my head in these situations. But on this day, at this moment, I was the one the other guy should have been worried about. I was the mentally unstable person who just didn’t give a shit. I squeezed the AirBud in my left hand so hard I thought I was going to crush it. I gave the guy a stare which I felt would turn him into dust.

Of course, we had to finish our transactions at the same time, and it looked like we were going to walk out of the store at the same time. All I was thinking is if this guy mutters even one word to me as we walk out, I am going to throw my first punch, in malice, of my life. Heck, I might even be the one to throw the verbal bomb that would blow this up. At this time, I heard the clerk call out from behind me. I had forgotten my lottery tickets on the counter. He handed them to me and we smirked at each other. I think I may have rolled my eyes and shook my head as well. We both were thinking the same thing.

As I thought better of it and walked out the opposite door on the other side of the store, I was thinking, “Don’t let this guy ruin your day. Don’t let him ruin your day! DON’T let him ruin your day!! He is not worth it. Don’t give him that power over you or you lose.”

Of course, he did ruin my day and dominate my thoughts. I couldn’t stop thinking about the dumb ass confrontation. Here I am writing about it days later, after all. I’ve never been that person to cut in a line. I am Mr. Manners. I felt a little guilty as I slid over to the clerk, even though I wasn’t really cutting the line. I was there first. I had been there minutes before the line formed. But logic counts for nothing. What separates us from other animals is our ability to rationalize - to think and know right from wrong. The problem is that word “think.”

At that precise moment listening to the construction worker with the reflective vest, I understood the concept of temporary insanity. For nearly a minute, I was fighting an uncontrollable urge to fight. Had the clerk not called me back to the counter, I honestly think things would have gotten physical. I didn’t care. What did I have to lose? I have never been arrested. Maybe that would be an experience. This guy couldn’t be allowed to get away with his ignorance. I did nothing wrong.

That got me thinking about how volatile today’s society is. Every day in the news there seems to be a mass shooting. There are news stories about people killing their families and then themselves. These stories are all too common nowadays. We think that these people must have really lost it, but they could be people just like me, and you. Mental illness continues to go undiagnosed and untreated, and innocent people are suffering for it. Innocent families are paying the price.

The lesson is to always weigh the risk-reward of a situation. What do you expect to happen as a result of your actions? Would me having thrown a punch at the construction worker solved anything? No. It is hard to think that way at those moments, though. It is hard to rationalize – you know, that thing that separates us from animals? But, we need to be always conscious of it, and be conscious of the fact that the other person might not be rational and may have lost their will to live. There is nothing more dangerous in the world.