I had almost forgotten to blog about this: Early this week I had a fascinating and rather humourous encounter on the street. Now, I don’t know if it is an east coast thing, a Canadian thing or just a youth-of-today thing but around these parts it is not uncommon to witness some young whippersnapper screaming incomprehensible insults out a car window at people they don’t know who are walking on the sidewalk. The screamer’s male groupies and pre-skanks (girls who have not yet acquired enough VD and drug addictions to be full skanks but are already hanging out with guys who are obviously not there to provide intellectual stimulation) laugh uproariously as the vehicle flees. One rarely gets a good look at the little darlings but that’s probably for the best. Well, earlier this week I got to view the scenario played out in slow motion since the screamer did not have a car to shout from.
A little background would be in order. I am in my mid-thirties with glasses and a slight gut. Not what a sensible person would call fat but obviously not in the best of shape. Recently I came to live in an area where a ten minute walk brings me to a park with a small oval walking track as well as a more mosquito-infested walking trail. Forty minutes of walking around the track, while muttering to myself about how pathetic journalists are and how damned our society is and how vast the number of morons among humanity’s ranks is, results in a fair amount of exercise. With the 10 minutes to walk there and back it makes for a good hour of increased heart rate. On a particularly warm day one can work up a fair sweat; especially if one is, as I say, not in the best of shape.
The sidewalk on the way to the park entrance where the walking track is runs for a long stretch with no driveways or turnoffs and has a drop off into the wooded park on one side and a very busy roadway on the other with woods on the other side of it. As I was walking back from the park, tired and sweaty, a male, likely of high school age and a couple of his pre-skanks were walking in the other direction toward me. I didn’t know they were as young as they were as I don’t generally scrutinize people’s appearance as I approach them in public. I didn’t think anything of it as they approached, since I assumed they were in conversation about something, but the male had what I believe is termed in the technical literature “a shit-eating grin”; as if he had thought of the most clever thing ever.
As I normally do when passing groups on a sidewalk I moved off onto the grass to let them pass on the pavement. Just as they were passing by the male says: “Hey there fatty, nice boob sweat!” He actually said “fatty”. Not “fat-ass”, not even “fatso” which would at least make him seem like a junior high school name-caller but “fatty”. Poor kid must have had severe head trauma at the age of nine; stunting his development. No matter. As it registered what he had said I wearily flipped him the bird without turning around. I knew he would be turned around to see my reaction as the reactions of others are all important to these folk. I was expecting several possible reactions. He might just laugh. He might run up and try to sucker punch me but with the sun low and behind me I would see his shadow well before he could reach me. I reminded myself not to push his little stick ass into the traffic or down the drop off where he could puncture a lung on a tree branch to tragic yet humourous effect. I contemplated whether I should take his wallet when the fight was over so I could report him to the cops quickly to establish self-defense and maybe get a few bucks for my troubles. But what happened next really did surprise me.
He took offense. Not physically, as in going on the offensive – he was offended at my giving him the finger. “Yeah!?!!?” he called back, “Well f**k me then!” as he continued walking away. Needless to say I was not expecting a sexual proposition given that he had, seconds ago, tried to insult me. When you give someone the finger it is often translated as “f**k you” but it does not really mean you are asking for a sexual encounter. At least it never did when I was growing up. Lots of girls have given me the finger and not once was it followed up with a clarification as to an offer of sex. I suppose he was caught off guard by my response as he had worked out a narrative where he insults someone – a mid-thirties adult with glasses who is obviously out of shape and tired – and, like all good citizens he tends to encounter, the adult “just walks away”. He then impresses his pre-skanks with how he has the stones to insult people at random and is so menacing that no-one ever says anything. When I screwed up his narrative, he was at a loss for a comeback to what should, in the adult world, not need a comeback. So “Yeah!?!!? Well f**k me then!” was the best he could come up with on short notice. I had, it seems, hurt his feelings.
Now in all fairness to him he may have come up with something really clever after that. Certainly he continued to yelp something but he was still walking in the opposite direction and was being completely drowned out by traffic. It became obvious that I was not going to see his shadow as he ran up to me. I was not going to have to worry about not puncturing his on a tree branch and I was not going to get hold of his wallet which likely had nothing in it as no-one would be stupid enough to employ him in a job market as tight as this and I suspect that his parents spend every dime on meth. I wonder if his wallet had a zipper on it? On the plus side, I did hurt his feelings and I don’t think even his pre-skanks could have been impressed with his overly hasty invitation to a stranger to have gay sex with him. Guys who want to have gay sex with strangers are not always the best match for an up and coming skank.
I haven’t seen my admirer since. Two males and a female were arrested later in the week down the road from this for a series of violent muggings but I doubt he or one of his pre-skanks could be involved, unless of course the mugging victims were in their fifties or sixties. But then, maybe his failure to seem macho with me made him desperate to prove himself and he turned to violent crime. Maybe I could have prevented the crimes if I had just run after him and pushed his scrawny ass down the embankment. Something to think about when I finally get hold of a time machine.