To the man who raised his hands in exasperation to me while driving today,
Sir, I don’t know what you wanted. I was waiting to turn left into 8th Street Family Video and you were in a long string of on-coming traffic. You slowed down and flashed your lights at me… but you didn’t slow down a lot. And I have three kids in my car, bad tires and I wasn’t in a hurry so I didn’t go. Frankly I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to turn, though you only had a miniscule slow down, or if you thought I should turn my headlights on. At 3:30. Yours were on, mine were not. But it wasn’t dark. You only gave me, like, 15 seconds to process your lights. So I did neither and you raised your arms in exasperation like I had just failed miserably at being a human being.
What I want to say to you is, be nice. So what? I didn’t take your suggestion, whatever it was. Big deal. Move on, be nice and maybe next time use a hand motion or something a little clearer if you’re going to get all butt-hurt when someone doesn’t do what you want them to do. And if they don’t take your super generous offer, who cares. It is not something to get mad about.
Yours truly,
Jacque Burke
Phew! Glad I got that out of my system. Now, on the other hand, I got all butt-hurt about a woman who was trying to get to the elevator I was in, the doors were almost closed and I quickly pushed the button to open them back up for her. She didn’t even make eye contact. No thanks, no hello, no friendly smile. Nothing. I thought that was strange. If someone clearly rushed the door to push the button so I could catch the elevator, I think I would have at least smiled at them. I, however, did not raise my arms in exasperation at her. But wouldn’t it have been funny if I had? I would have thrown my arms up, groaning and rolling my eyes, then we would have stood together in uncomfortably close quarters for two more floors and tried to ignore each other. Awkward! And please believe me, I wasn’t looking for praise, but I would have smiled at her had she even looked at me. I just thought it odd, that’s all.
Next time something like this happens, I’ll just burst into song, a love song. Serenade the person. That’ll teach her!
Jacqueverse 