On Being Nice ...

When I'm in English teacher mode, I deplore the word "nice".  In fact, if my students use the word "nice" in their writing, I have a mild fit and launch into a dissertation on the need for strong adjectives.

That being said, however, I've been called "nice" twice in the past twenty-four hours, once in cyberspace (thanks, Bud :-)) and once in person, and I have to say that it feels ... good (another word that induces the "weak descriptor" lecture, but for some reason it fits here).

On my way home from work yesterday, I stopped at a fairly busy gas station because I wanted a cold Diet Coke (and, to be completely frank, because I had to pee and I knew that this particular convenience store keeps their bathrooms pretty clean).  As I stepped out of my car, I heard someone yell what Ralphie in A Christmas Story refers to as "the 'Queen Mother' of all swears".

I heard people pointing and laughing, but when I got closer to the door, I saw an old man on the ground with his groceries spilled out of the paper bag he'd been carrying, and I got really mad at the stupid rubberneckers.

I walked over to the man and said, "Can I help you, sir?" He looked at me for a long time and said in a quiet voice, "Don't ever get old." His eyes were a very light blue and the whites were yellowed and shot through with red snaps. I suspect this meant that he was a drinker, but that didn't matter.

What mattered was that nobody should have to lay on the dirty asphalt of a gas station parking lot while a bunch of people stand around laughing.

I asked again, "Can I help you, sir?", and he slowly sat up, gathered his grocery items back into the bag and handed them to me.

"Could you put this in my car, please?" he asked.

His vehicle was an old and rusty blue station wagon, very similar to the one my mother gave my brother shortly after he got his license (in 1987). The back of the car was filled with stuff, and the bench seat in front was dirty and stained. I put the groceries gently into the passenger seat, trying not to breathe too deeply (it reeked of cigarettes and body odor and musty, dusty air).

When I turned back to the man, he was struggling to get up and not having much success. He scooted himself closer to the car using his hands and tried mightily to allow the relative stability of the station wagon assist him in getting to his feet.

If my back hadn't hurt so badly, I would have been on the ground helping him from the start, but at this point, I realized that getting him off the ground was more important than my stupid back (and people were still pointing and laughing, although not as loudly).

I bent down, ignoring my stupid back, and he put one hand on my arm and the other on his car. He slowly pulled himself to his feet, and I wanted to cry. "Don't ever get old," he repeated.

When he was finally sitting back in his car, he unrolled the window. "You're a very nice girl," he told me. "I can't thank you enough."

"Oh, it's no problem," I said, and started to head toward the store before looking back at him. "Um, make sure you take some ibuprofen when you get home. Sometimes when you fall like that, you get really stiff and sore afterwards even if you don't notice it right away."

"Ibuprofen?" he asked, a blank look on his face.

"Advil, Motrin, that sort of thing," I replied. "I have some in my car, if you want me to run and grab you some."

"Oh, no thank you, I have pain pills at home." He paused. "Thank you again for being so nice."

"You're very welcome," I said. "I hope you feel better soon."

And then I went into the gas station and used the restroom and got my Diet Coke (and a Milky Way bar ... my weight is really starting to go to hell, but it was like I needed something to sweeten the bitterness I was feeling) and when I got back outside, he was gone.

My back was starting to really kill, so I took some of the ibuprofen I'd offered the old man and drove home. And thought. A lot.

Helping out the old man had taken less than five minutes. If my stupid back hadn't been hurting, it would have taken even less time. Why was it that the other people at the gas station (and there were a lot of people there, either pumping gas since the price was lower than I've seen it in months or going in and out of the store) didn't stop to help the guy out?

And not only did they not walk over and make sure he was okay, they pointed. They laughed. They found it amusing that he'd yelled, "Fuc*" as he fell to the ground.

I am no saint. I have a zillion and a half faults. My faults, however, do not extend to not just ignoring a fellow human being in need of a simple helping hand but laughing at his misfortune.

I don't think I'm exceptionally "nice" in the great scheme of things ... it's just that clearly so many other people are evidently not.

And that realization was just horrible.

So 34 Is When the Middle-Aged Thing Kicks In ...

I realized today that I'm getting old.

I joke all the time about how old I'm getting, give my students a hard time about the strands of gray in my hair, and tease the rookie teachers about being babes in the woods. In general, though, I feel pretty much the same as I always did, so I'd written off 34 as just another number ... until it came crashing down on me that I'm not a kid anymore.

Okay, here's what happened.

I have a lead foot. I don't mean to speed, it's just not something I pay the best attention to. I have (knock on wood) never been in a real car accident ... I just like to drive fast. And, to be fair, I don't drive anywhere near as fast as I used to (racking up the speeding tickets will do that).

I live in New Hampshire. I've been driving in snow, often quite a lot of snow, since I was sixteen. Truth be told, I love to drive in snow. Well, I did.

Until I woke up this morning, and the roads were sheets of ice, and it took me almost two hours to get to work. It then snowed all day, and the drive home ... well, they say a picture's worth a thousand words (and no, I probably should not have been taking a picture of how bad the driving was while I was actually driving).



So what happened to turn me from a lover of snow-driving to a cautious Cathy?

It's weird, but the only thing I can think of is that a couple of my friends were in a pretty bad snow-related car accident recently. I've driven in snow since, but I haven't been enjoying it as much, and today I was honestly afraid.

I went to one of those friends, Donna, for advice on which route to take home today--the flatter, longer one or the shorter, ridiculously steeper one. She voted for short and steep, so I headed out as soon as possible.

And I don't think I hit 20 MPH for the duration of that long, long back mountain road. Donna was right behind me, which I thought she realized, but once I got onto a main road that was at least moderately maintained, I got a text.

DONNA: Stay off Mountain Road. Very slippery.
KATIE: Thank you, but I was the car in front of you driving like a grandma ;)
DONNA: Okay, I did not mind.
KATIE: : )

And it hit me like a ton of breaks how fragile life is, how truly dangerous driving in snow is, and how fortunate I am to have reached the age of 34 considering the parking lot doughnuts and the reckless, unnecessary trips and the lack of understanding I had of what a responsibility driving is.

This was driven home, by the way, when I got onto another semi-back road (I had to go pick Addie up ... I didn't let her drive herself to school today) and this guy started tailgating me. Like, I have All Wheel Drive and I was slipping and sliding a bit, and this guy was so close I could not see the front of his car.

Ten years ago--heck, one year ago, I would have started driving faster because obviously the pace I was setting wasn't good enough. Today, I pulled over to the side of the road and let the guy pass me.

Yup, middle age hits at 34, if I'm any indication ... unless that's just adulthood in general catching up to me at last ;)

Traumatized by a Nutjob in a Parking Lot

You know how sometimes the things that make you unspeakably happy, terrified beyond belief, and so angry that you don't know what to do are often lost in translation when you try to explain them? I suspect that this is going to be one of those times. It's coming off sounding stupid and maybe even a little funny when I write it down, but I will never forget how upset I was yesterday.

Okay, so I went to the grocery store yesterday afternoon to get peaches (I had a craving) and Swedish fish (because Addie had a craving). I pulled into the parking lot and noticed that it was crowded. Very crowded. It's been my observation that people (myself included) tend to drive like idiots in a parking lot, so I was automatically paying close attention.

Grocery store parking lots theoretically follow the rules of the road--namely, you're on the right side of the road, you use your blinker to let your intentions known, and so on.

I was driving down the last parking section (I'm telling you--ridiculously busy) when I passed a spot on my right that I didn't notice until I was just past it ... and there was a truck coming the other way that had his blinker on. I assumed he was going for the spot I'd driven by, so I put my left blinker on and pulled into the empty slot at the end of the row of cars.

And looked into my rearview mirror to see the truck almost hit me. Evidently his blinker was supposed to serve as fair warning that he was planning on reversing into the parking spot I pulled into ... and I guess I should have had ESP to figure that out since it was his LEFT blinker and there was an open parking spot on his LEFT as I drove past him.

It scared me a little bit, but I was like, "Eh, whatever." I mean, if I got all worked up every time there was a near fender bender in the grocery store parking lot, I'd be pretty strung out.

So I'm sitting in my car replying to an e-mail I'd gotten on my BlackBerry when all of a sudden there was this pounding on the window of my car. Like, "could-have-broken-the-glass" level pounding.

I opened my window to hear this guy scream in my face (with a spit shower, which made it somehow worse), "Didn't you see me backing up? You almost hit me!"

I was shaking and scared. "No, sir, I saw you going straight that way, and I was going straight this way, so I--"

"You stupid fucking bitch!" he roared, then marched off.

And I just went to pieces. I sat in my car and cried for probably ten minutes, then I went to a different grocery store and got a peach and candy bars for my kids (since they didn't have Swedish fish). Andy called, and I let it ring because I was so unbelievably shaken up.

The thing is, if he had came up, knocked gently on my window, and said, "You know, could you try to be a little more careful next time?", I would have been okay with it. I would have disagreed with his evident impression that every driver in America has to follow a "Yield to Blue GMC pick-up, New Hampshire license plate #147 84-- because he is the king of the road" clause that I never learned about in driver's ed, but I would have just nodded, smiled, and apologized, because that's how I roll.

I hate confrontation, and I especially hate that I can think of a million things I could have done differently after the incident was over. I should have gone into the store and talked to a manager. I should have called the police. I should have made some sarcastic, cutting remark about the clause that should clearly be taught in driver's ed.

But instead I cried like a baby.

The reasons that this affected me so viscerally:

1. The man was 10-15 years older than I am. I am still young enough (heh) that I have a certain amount of automatic respect for "my elders". The idea that someone in an age demographic that has my respect just for being in that age demographic would consider my respect so cheaply just ... traumatized me. And if I were a different kind of person, it might make me reconsider that respect that prior to this I gave 100% freely. I'm me, so of course this won't happen, but it sort of made me realize why so many people in the world are bitter, suspicious, and negative.

2. I am neither stupid nor a bitch. I know what my I.Q. is (it's in the "superior range"), I have a graduate degree, and I am a teacher. I am also in general a kind, giving, self-sacrificing person (I have my faults, but those things really are true). What right did he have to insult me using such inflammatory (and, in my case, blatantly false) words? It just made me feel like vomiting.

3. Angry, violent men turn me to Jello. I spent much of my childhood scared to death of my father's anger--just to give one example, the window of our oven was broken for quite some time because my dad got so mad that he slammed the oven door. I lived in fear of slammings, bangs, and crashes when I was a kid (the fact that I've ended up with far too many violent, angry men of my own volition is kind of a warped irony, I suppose). Anyway, that fist pounding on my window was like a time machine, and I was suddenly three years old again.

Again, I know that the true horror this was for me is cheapened by words. Sometimes this is the case ... several years ago, my brother, sister, brother-in-law, and I jumped off a moving train (yes, a real train). It's a hell of a story and I usually end up telling it to my students at one point or another (usually when I'm having them write about peer pressure) and they think it's just hysterically funny. However, I've tried to write it down probably a dozen times or so, and it just doesn't work as a written chronicle (or maybe I'm not a good enough writer, I don't know ;-)).

Anyway, that's a really weak retelling of what was probably in the top five in terms of traumatic events in my life.

I will never, ever forget it.