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I pulled into the parking lot at Best Buy today. It was raining. Now you should know that typically, Californians consider rain a deep, personal tragedy. So, like most Californians in this situation, I found myself looking for a parking space nice and close to the store. I saw a prime spot and was about to pull in, when I saw the sign in the picture above. Now I have a Honda Element. It’s not a gas guzzler, but I wouldn’t really consider it a “fuel efficient vehicle”. So I backed out of the spot and moved to another spot further away. And as I watched, a H2 pulled into the spot I just vacated. We’re talking about a Hummer here. A Hum-freaking-V.
Fuel efficient this bad boy is not. I mean we’re talking about single digit MPG here. Like equivalent to a large RV. These things are about as far from a fuel efficient car as you can get in a consumer passenger vehicle. But this driver felt like it would be okay, maybe even funny to park his gas guzzler in the “fuel efficient” car spot.
I thought about taking a picture, but I just didn’t have the energy for another big-time, loud, in your face confrontation today. And somehow, I didn’t think this person was the type who would thank me for my input, apologize and park somewhere else. I’m sure this guy thought he was being terribly cute in a BS, hipster, pseudo-ironic sort of way.
This is a textbook example of somebody who is not only deeply entitled, but also apparently completely unashamed about it. There are lots and lots of people in the world like this. There probably always will be. But today I decided I don’t have to take on the job of educating every completely spoiled little turd that walks the earth on two legs. I’m not his mommy. I’m not his girlfriend or his sister or even his friend. I can choose to be neither upset nor amused by him. I can choose to walk away. And even though he’s getting his little moment of glory on my blog, I feel fairly confident he’ll never, ever know it.
I think this is an important lesson for me in my work. I can stand up for myself. I can fight for our rights. But I also have the right to choose my own battles. I can also choose on a rainy day to pay the bad guys no mind and bring kindness into the world. I can choose to ignore the spoiled child and hold the door for somebody else who needs a little boost.
I can choose to have the common sense to come in out of the rain.
Love,
The Fat Chick
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This was a perfect read for me today…. an affirmation I’ve been repeating lately is, “Kindness created me kind.” Sometimes simply approaching the world from a loving perspective is the best thing of all.
Shortly after my father had a major hemorrhagic stroke in 2004, which was the big kickstart to physical and eventual mental debilitation and death six years later, I read that Paris Hilton gets a kick out of parking in handicapped spaces and having her accountant write the 300 dollar check, because 300 dollars to her is like three cents is to most people. Not to put too fine a point on it, I wanted to find the bitch and take a golf club to her knees, let her see what it was like to actually be handicapped. In reality I would simply chew her ass up one side and down the other with a verbal onslaught that would give her nightmares for the rest of her life, but her snotty, entitled rich-bitch privilege made me so angry that if I hadn’t been raised to be a non-combative person except if physically attacked, my initial impulse would be to hurt her very badly on a physical level.
My father’s stroke changed our entire family’s life, and not for the better. It seems like since then everything has just kept on a downward slope, especially for my mother. I know there were actually positives from it. If he hadn’t had the stroke, I wouldn’t have been aware of the family tendency towards hypertension, or of the importance of taking medication if one does develop hypertension.
My hypertension onset at 45. My younger brother, who is not overweight, had his onset when he was only 19. He ended up with a medical discharge from the Army because of it.
Nobody is sure when my father’s hypertension onset. He was never prone to going to the doctor.
One of the most important elements of keeping my serenity is choosing my battles. Brava!
[…] honor of Wednesday’s post, I present the H2: a not so very fuel efficient ve-hic-le that I feel fairly confident weighs […]