I am driving along, minding my own business in the WalMart parking lot when.....perchance crosses my path, a man driving a little silver Honda. He turns wide the wrong way, into the very one-way aisle in which I am driving, the correct way.
The man in the silver Honda is now blocking traffic, but that's ok. I have to drive very very slowly and carefully to get around him but that's ok too because it's a beautiful day and I am especially forgiving on days when the sky is so blue. As I slowly move past him and since we are going in opposite directions through the same space, our drivers windows pass within inches of one another. Our windows are both open.
We're close enough now that I can see the man in the silver Honda has a mean and somewhat troubled look on his face. Puzzled, I harken back to advice from some Internet forward that tells me "when someone doesn't have a smile, brighten their day by giving them one of yours!"
It seemed to me good advice at the time I read it and surely this is the perfect moment to put it into practice. I am nothing, if not a day-brightener.
We are now passing close enough to one another that I can see the hairs on the arm hanging out his window. I look straight into his eyes (behind their cheap sunglassses), smile really big and I mention to the man with the mean face in a happy and pleasant voice as I pass, "You are going the wrong direction, honeybee."
Yes, I DID call him "honeybee". I did. But only as a term of generic endearment and remember, I used a very happy and pleasant voice too. I said it loud enough so that he could hear, but I emphasize that I did not shout.
As his wife smiled, waved and offered pleasantries from the passenger seat (I could be wrong, it happened really fast....) the man in the silver Honda responded by calling me a F---ING B-TCH.
I am still aghast at the response. I was, after all, just driving along minding my own biz. I'm not smiling brightly anymore. The man in the silver Honda is not only mean looking but he is also stupid. Quite likely a result of global warming. Damn that Al Gore, anyway.
In review for the Honda-driving gentlemen in my community:
This is a directional arrow.It is painted on the WalMart parking lot surface to help people who are directionally challenged know which way they are supposed to go.
Here is another shot of the arrow, close-up. Interestingly, the arrow does not change as one gets closer, it always points the same direction.
This is how parking lots work. The arrows are big and yellow, just to make sure everyone can see them. In general, these arrows pretty much keep people with anything larger than a pea-sized brain going in the right direction.
In the absence of any comprehension of directional arrows, one can also observe the manner in which cars are parked in the aisles as an indication of which direction one should be driving.
It's a pretty good system. One aisle parks this-a-way and the next aisle parks that-a-way. They use it lots of places. For example, in nearly every parking lot in the entire United States of America including Alaska and Hawaii and Puerto Rico which isn't a state but wants to be because they think we have such good parking lot sytems in place.
I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the man in the silver Honda does not get out much. Perhaps the man in the silver Honda was not really mean. Perhaps he is a dumb-ass that should have his license taken away. Or, perhaps he was just trying to find his way to the OPTICAL Department at WalMart for a pair of new driving glasses.
So close...........and yet so far away.
He was driving down this very aisle in the wrong direction. Keen observer that she undoubtedly is, I'll just betcha his wife noticed it, too.
Seeeeeee??????????? I was right, honeybee.
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