Look, I’m as irritable as the next person. Or the 10 next persons. So I get it. I understand wanting to tell the screaming kid next to you in Panera to shut up, or shouting at the idiot in the turn lane who is texting and ignoring the green GO arrow. I really, really feel you.
But there’s something about older bitter ladies. Like when they yell at your children in the restaurant and bitchily tell them to be quiet. Your children who are joining other children in a group waltz right before the Father-Daughter Dance at the elementary school. Your children dressed in taffeta and hair bows and ballet slippers. Your children engaged in funplay in the OUTSIDE eating area in an uncrowded restaurant.
Sure the kids were loud. That’s annoying. Like I said, I get it. But here’s where my simmering silent irritation differs: I move inside or I square my shoulders and suck it up because they are CHILDREN who are OUTSIDE right before their first DANCE. You know, I notice the taffeta and the smiles and I kinda let it go.
Not so this older bitter lady.
Engaged in a conversation with her dinner partner, her brow furrows deepened as she recounted some story probably involving cats and the latest CSI episode. Or how she hates everybody. Probably the latter. I’m guessing she doesn’t talk to her siblings due to some unburied hatchet from 1983 and has never married because every man bugs her. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
About 5 minutes after she arrived at the restaurant, she turned her withering stare to the cavorting children in front of her and yelled, “Would you be quiet? I’m trying to have a conversation.” So there was that. And this is why I love being married to The Rock. He wasn’t gonna let THAT fly, no sir. Whereas I would have looked at her askance and been pissed under my breath, my husband turns to her and says, “Rather than yelling at the children, you could have just told the parents they were too loud for you.”
Of course, she ignored him, turning instead to her dinner partner who I like to think was mortified. Furthermore, as we left, The Rock said, “Have a happy life,” after which she cockily replied, “You too, buddy,” whereupon I perpetrated my trademark disappointed stare™ upon her person, the one where I nod sadly at what a CSI-loving asshole she is and too bad she is going to die alone with cats eating her face.
She smugly stared me down and whispered something in a cupped hand to her probably embarrassed eating companion.
See, although I’m generally irritable, I typically let things roll off my shoulder, but seriously? I hope the cats enjoy her face when they’re eating it even though it will probably taste of disappointment and witch hazel.
I just married the Rock in my imagination.
Oh my God!! I think there’s a bitter old lady like this in EVERY restaurant that caters to children. I often wonder why they don’t just go to the buffet at 4:30 with the rest of the bitter old ladies, but they probably don’t like them either.
Someday soon she will make some cats VERY happy.
I have very nice visions of the cats eating her face and a sore side from you making me laugh! I think I am going to open a restaurant for bitter old ladies, they can all sit around and tell each other how miserable everyone else is.
I hope she becomes a buffet for all the ferral cats in her neighborhood. And I hope all the kids got louder.
You know, I love my cats and I enjoy a nice episode of CSI but you respect the fucking taffeta! Seriously. The Rock is super.
“..disappointment and witch hazel.” Brilliant.
You will never admit it but I KNOW you are just as tickled by “disappointment and witch hazel” as much as I am. That’s gotta go in some description hall of fame SOMEWHERE.
Another bitters and soda for the road, dear? ;)
i still cannot get over this: . . . whereupon I perpetrated my trademark disappointed stare™ upon her person, the one where I nod sadly at what a CSI-loving asshole she is and too bad she is going to die alone with cats eating her face.
brilliant!
Is it bad that I love the idea of cats eating her face? Oh, I hope so.
Oh, you guys were far too polite. Which was, of course, the right thing to be. I got incensed just reading this! Just think how miserable her life must be.
I hope she gets what’s coming to her–beyond your “Trademark Disappointed Stare”–the cats and all of it!
How can you not see little girls dressed up and not melt a little inside? I guess if your heart is a shriveled up prune pit…
LOL!!! Now get off my grass, will ya?
That was awesome. :)
Oh, girl…just read this out loud to Heather and we are CRACKING UP. This and the bra one. Great stuff.