Wednesday, December 27, 2006

poppa bear

Do I have a Daddy complex? I find myself wanting to act like the poppa even beyond my biological parameters.

I was at the mall on Saturday... Stop!!

Going to the mall on the Saturday before Christmas is ONLY for manly men and people who work retail. If any of you regular shoppers want to haggle, complain, or make exchanges, you must do it on another day.

Anyway, I was at the mall on Saturday, and there was a bunch of people trying to funnel through a skinny space from both sides. You can mindlessly try to all go at the same time, or you can make an attempt to resemble civilized society.

I saw a family who had been trying to get through from the other side, and decided not to separate them, but step aside and wave them through. As the family passed through, some lowlife decided to cut through and push his way past everybody as if we were inanimate obstacles. Hmph!

I wanted to grab this nitwit by the back of his collar and usher him to a corner where he would have to sit in time out and think about what he just did. But I am not his father, and he was not a child, but a man who looked to be in his 30’s. I decided not to make a big deal, but took a mental note of how bad some people can behave.

Five minutes later, it happened again (different idiot) in the same store!

4 comments:

Llama Momma said...

People can behave very, very badly. Just last week (what a few days before christmas?), I was trying to cross a busy parking lot with my children. It was raining. I'm pushing a stroller, holding a preschoolers hand, and he's holding his brother's hand. With my big mom backpack on, I fear we look like a traveling freak show. But don't you think someone would stop and let us cross the street? We stood there forever waiting (in the rain) until FINALLY someone let us pass. UNREAL. I used it as an object lesson for my boys -- the importance of holding doors and stopping to let people cross the street. And we call ourselves a civilized society...

Thanks for the LM link, BTW!

Anonymous said...

It is amazing and awful how rude the general public can be. When I am taking my kids and the neighborhood kids to school I see cars not stopping to let kids cross the street on below zero days, on rainy days, doesn't matter. The cars just whip by them while they are standing to cross at a crosswalk that cars are supposed to stop at when kids are there. It is kind of funny because I will pull my car out and block the traffic in both directions. I get some dirty looks until they see the kids crossing. I always tell the kids in my car "Remember this when you get your license. Let the kids cross the street, even if there isn't a crosswalk. Let people cross the street." Teachable moments.

Even So... said...

I wonder if they would be pushing their way past the crowd if they knew it was on the rush to hell...

Sorry, but as "little man" (5'2"), this sort of thing really gets me going....I cannot recall the number of times I have been "swum" by in a crowd...you know, all the taller fella has to do is place his elbow over my head, move his arm down, and voila!, he has just gotten in front of me...that happened to me one day nearly a dozen separate times....

It is like when you are trying to block their path from doom, giving them the gospel, but they rear up and say, "don't try and stop me!"

It is like you stopping on the edge of a cliff, and someone else is about to run over, and you get them to stop...another misses, and starts to fall over, but you grab them by the arm and pull them up...another falls over, but as you grab their arm to pull them up, they fight you and try and get you to let go, and still another in the same situation tries to pull you down with them!

I apologize for the rambling, but this scenario and others like it has happend or been seen by me so many times, I have thought about it almost constantly for years during crowded events...

Craver Vii said...

That's exactly why I carry a battle-axe.