Incident
CREW grand
2012/04/06 21:05:17
(This is just a blog about something that occurred years ago, but read if you wish and comment as you like. Or not.)
To be filed under "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."
I was once in a hotel lobby at perhaps 7 PM or so. They had a courtesy bar with things such as a large bowl half full of apples and oranges, and a coffee machine that also dispensed hot water for tea or cocoa. A hot beverage appealed to me this cool evening, so I approached that machine, where a little girl about 10 years old was busy attempting to mix her drink with considerable difficulty. She had straight, shoulder-length, blazingly orange hair reminiscent of Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, and was wearing a pastel pink satiny floral-print dress with a thin, stark white sweater jacket covering her arms and shoulders as a bolero would, and had equally stark white leggings and black Mary Janes below. The overall outfit struck me as odd; it were the type of thing a girl would only wear on Easter here in a coastal state, but it was autumn, and she looked out of place. I guessed she were from somewhere in the Midwest, perhaps Kansas or Nebraska, where people still manage to dress their children up but may not be as attuned to the latest fashion trends as coastal people tend to be.
As she noticed me come near, she politely took a step to the side so I could clearly access the machine, then continued looking up expressionless at me, while my eyes took in and my brain instantly assessed the situation at hand. It registered that she had simply wanted a cup of hot cocoa, and had done her best to prepare one. However, she had emptied a cocoa packet into the paper cup, then had slowly added hot water on top of it, and rather than blending together smoothly, the cocoa powder had congealed into a large mass at the bottom of the cup. Naturally she had looked for something to stir it with, but in the interest of pinching pennies, the hotel had not made anything as strong as a plastic spoon available, so she had used the only utensil they offered there, a single plastic coffee stir, the kind that resemble two tiny brown straws glued together. The problem was that this coffee stir was cheaply made and too flexible; it would have been fine for mixing together two liquids such as coffee and cream, or even a liquid and a solid such as sugar, the crystals of which would readily dissolve in hot coffee or tea rather than clumping together, but the stir was confounded by the thick, gooey substance currently residing at the bottom of the girl's cup, opting instead to merely bend under the strain and cause the girl undue frustration.
Having experienced and solved similar problems myself, this is the point at which I made the mistake of trying to be helpful. I assumed she had been properly raised to respect a "one per customer" policy when taking freely given items, and probably thought she would be punished or verbally chastised by her parents or hotel personnel if she were caught doing otherwise. However, there are times that such unwritten rules must be bent the way her coffee stir was bending, and this was one such time.
I held out my hand in a horizontal C shape, then smiled and said, "Let me see." She handed me her cup, so I took three additional coffee stirs from the box, added them to the one already in her cup and braced them all tightly together to form the equivalent of one thicker, sturdier stir. I blended the drink as well as I could, using my adult advantages of engineering knowledge and strength, until I could no longer feel a solid mass in the cup, and the top of the liquid was nice and frothy, then I removed and discarded the stirs and handed the cup back to her, the cocoa now ready to enjoy. She smiled and made a face that indicated to me she was on the verge of saying "thank you," when suddenly....
"Angie! Don't take that from him! What the hell's the matter with you?"
Mom brusquely came over, snatched the cup from Angie, grabbed the girl by the wrist and pulled her out of the way, then threw the cup of cocoa into the waist-high trash bin next to me. Now, when I say "threw," I don't mean it in the typical English language sense of "throwing" something away or merely discarding it. She did not calmly reach toward the trash bin and gently drop it in. She literally threw it, hurling it with enough force that while the bulk of the liquid did enter the bin, much of it also splattered upward onto the side of the machine, the tabletop, my T-shirt, and even the wooden handrail of the staircase behind the machine. I stood speechless, dumbfounded and astonished, while Mom dragged Angie away from me, still tightly grasping her wrist, and toward the front desk where Dad had apparently just completed the check-in process.
Mom made a quick remark to Dad that I couldn't hear, then as they began walking to their room, they all turned to the side to look back at me. Mom and Dad cast angry, dirty looks, seemingly confident that she had just rescued Angie from a guy who, given another ten seconds without her intervention, would have dosed Angie with a tranquilizer, carried her into the rest room, and already begun to cut her hair to make her look like a boy, so as to slip her away unnoticed. Never mind the pastel pink satiny floral-print dress, the evil kidnapper would undoubtedly also have some boys' clothes in just her size handy. Dad never said a word but looked like a cross between Tracey Walter, William Sanderson and Elmer Fudd. I would guess he earned the primary income in the family but still wasn't the alpha of the pack, his most commonly-spoken household phrase probably being "Yes, dear."
Angie's look was more forlorn, and in those few seconds, her face conveyed the lengthy message to me, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were made to suffer this indignity, and I'm also sorry that I won't be enjoying any hot cocoa anytime soon. I'm sorry that my mother is a royal bitch, and I'm sorry that I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes listening to yet another lecture on 'stranger danger.' At least you can take solace in the fact that this will probably be your only interaction with her ever, while I must resign myself to tolerating another eight years or so of hellishly strict home life before escaping to college, a convent, or running off and eloping with the first guy willing to help me get out of here.
"I'm just... sorry."
To be filed under "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."
I was once in a hotel lobby at perhaps 7 PM or so. They had a courtesy bar with things such as a large bowl half full of apples and oranges, and a coffee machine that also dispensed hot water for tea or cocoa. A hot beverage appealed to me this cool evening, so I approached that machine, where a little girl about 10 years old was busy attempting to mix her drink with considerable difficulty. She had straight, shoulder-length, blazingly orange hair reminiscent of Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, and was wearing a pastel pink satiny floral-print dress with a thin, stark white sweater jacket covering her arms and shoulders as a bolero would, and had equally stark white leggings and black Mary Janes below. The overall outfit struck me as odd; it were the type of thing a girl would only wear on Easter here in a coastal state, but it was autumn, and she looked out of place. I guessed she were from somewhere in the Midwest, perhaps Kansas or Nebraska, where people still manage to dress their children up but may not be as attuned to the latest fashion trends as coastal people tend to be.
As she noticed me come near, she politely took a step to the side so I could clearly access the machine, then continued looking up expressionless at me, while my eyes took in and my brain instantly assessed the situation at hand. It registered that she had simply wanted a cup of hot cocoa, and had done her best to prepare one. However, she had emptied a cocoa packet into the paper cup, then had slowly added hot water on top of it, and rather than blending together smoothly, the cocoa powder had congealed into a large mass at the bottom of the cup. Naturally she had looked for something to stir it with, but in the interest of pinching pennies, the hotel had not made anything as strong as a plastic spoon available, so she had used the only utensil they offered there, a single plastic coffee stir, the kind that resemble two tiny brown straws glued together. The problem was that this coffee stir was cheaply made and too flexible; it would have been fine for mixing together two liquids such as coffee and cream, or even a liquid and a solid such as sugar, the crystals of which would readily dissolve in hot coffee or tea rather than clumping together, but the stir was confounded by the thick, gooey substance currently residing at the bottom of the girl's cup, opting instead to merely bend under the strain and cause the girl undue frustration.
Having experienced and solved similar problems myself, this is the point at which I made the mistake of trying to be helpful. I assumed she had been properly raised to respect a "one per customer" policy when taking freely given items, and probably thought she would be punished or verbally chastised by her parents or hotel personnel if she were caught doing otherwise. However, there are times that such unwritten rules must be bent the way her coffee stir was bending, and this was one such time.
I held out my hand in a horizontal C shape, then smiled and said, "Let me see." She handed me her cup, so I took three additional coffee stirs from the box, added them to the one already in her cup and braced them all tightly together to form the equivalent of one thicker, sturdier stir. I blended the drink as well as I could, using my adult advantages of engineering knowledge and strength, until I could no longer feel a solid mass in the cup, and the top of the liquid was nice and frothy, then I removed and discarded the stirs and handed the cup back to her, the cocoa now ready to enjoy. She smiled and made a face that indicated to me she was on the verge of saying "thank you," when suddenly....
"Angie! Don't take that from him! What the hell's the matter with you?"
Mom brusquely came over, snatched the cup from Angie, grabbed the girl by the wrist and pulled her out of the way, then threw the cup of cocoa into the waist-high trash bin next to me. Now, when I say "threw," I don't mean it in the typical English language sense of "throwing" something away or merely discarding it. She did not calmly reach toward the trash bin and gently drop it in. She literally threw it, hurling it with enough force that while the bulk of the liquid did enter the bin, much of it also splattered upward onto the side of the machine, the tabletop, my T-shirt, and even the wooden handrail of the staircase behind the machine. I stood speechless, dumbfounded and astonished, while Mom dragged Angie away from me, still tightly grasping her wrist, and toward the front desk where Dad had apparently just completed the check-in process.
Mom made a quick remark to Dad that I couldn't hear, then as they began walking to their room, they all turned to the side to look back at me. Mom and Dad cast angry, dirty looks, seemingly confident that she had just rescued Angie from a guy who, given another ten seconds without her intervention, would have dosed Angie with a tranquilizer, carried her into the rest room, and already begun to cut her hair to make her look like a boy, so as to slip her away unnoticed. Never mind the pastel pink satiny floral-print dress, the evil kidnapper would undoubtedly also have some boys' clothes in just her size handy. Dad never said a word but looked like a cross between Tracey Walter, William Sanderson and Elmer Fudd. I would guess he earned the primary income in the family but still wasn't the alpha of the pack, his most commonly-spoken household phrase probably being "Yes, dear."
Angie's look was more forlorn, and in those few seconds, her face conveyed the lengthy message to me, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were made to suffer this indignity, and I'm also sorry that I won't be enjoying any hot cocoa anytime soon. I'm sorry that my mother is a royal bitch, and I'm sorry that I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes listening to yet another lecture on 'stranger danger.' At least you can take solace in the fact that this will probably be your only interaction with her ever, while I must resign myself to tolerating another eight years or so of hellishly strict home life before escaping to college, a convent, or running off and eloping with the first guy willing to help me get out of here.
"I'm just... sorry."
Don
Is this your first time being in such a situation?
Anyway, don't let this terrible person change you.
Unfortunately, I do have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I might just need to compile all those into a book and let the reader decide.
They would probably think it was fiction because nobody could be that unlucky.
Don
Something that happens to me fairly often, (I lve I NY, NY and am sometimes in the right area for this to happen) maybe a couple of times a month, there will be plenty of people around to bother, but if there is a nut, they will always target me (there can be 100 people around). it sounds like a joke, but I started noticing that it really happens that way. Once on a crowded bus, stuck in traffic, evertbody was grumbling and this woman hit me because I would not give her more room to pass by me, even though the bus was so crowded I caound not move for her and there was no where for her to go. She could have tried to go in any other direction and hit anyone else, but it was like she knew i was the only person who would not get angry and hit her back. I just laughed, inside, at myself because this just how my life is and because she was acting so badly, I could not get riled enough to argue at that point, if the situation is funny to you it is hard to be mad and, anyway you lack a certain edge so you wont win anyway. lol
How do people pick me. I do not look too friendly, I frown pretty naturally and it gets worse if someone is going to talk...
Something that happens to me fairly often, (I lve I NY, NY and am sometimes in the right area for this to happen) maybe a couple of times a month, there will be plenty of people around to bother, but if there is a nut, they will always target me (there can be 100 people around). it sounds like a joke, but I started noticing that it really happens that way. Once on a crowded bus, stuck in traffic, evertbody was grumbling and this woman hit me because I would not give her more room to pass by me, even though the bus was so crowded I caound not move for her and there was no where for her to go. She could have tried to go in any other direction and hit anyone else, but it was like she knew i was the only person who would not get angry and hit her back. I just laughed, inside, at myself because this just how my life is and because she was acting so badly, I could not get riled enough to argue at that point, if the situation is funny to you it is hard to be mad and, anyway you lack a certain edge so you wont win anyway. lol
How do people pick me. I do not look too friendly, I frown pretty naturally and it gets worse if someone is going to talk to me, but nuts pick up on the fact, I wont yell at them or hit them or get frightened, or get angry. Somehow, that woman on the bus, must have known I was safe to try and start with - I should mention I am tall and athletic, so it is not outward appearence.
-So, somehow, your idiot knew she could act crazed with you. It would not happen to you if you over and over, if you had some flaw to worry and I if it happens a lot, there is some reason. She is scared of whatever you represent to her, but you, yourself must not be to bad. B)
They always make a beeline straight for me.
But I also do have sheer bad luck.
If you ever see a taxi with a flat tire in the pouring rain on the Long Island Expressway, where the driver even had the nerve to leave the meter running while changing the tire, look in the back and I'll be the passenger.
I know because that's happened to me too.
I try to be nice and mind my own business, live and let live, but my whole life I've been forced by other people into these stressful and confrontational situations.
I'm the poster boy for "Why me?"
Don
She is a hateful crazy person. She may have done the same thing with a woman, if the woman was Black or something else she hates or mistrusts. You know what I mean.
And the line blurs between the realms of protective and overprotective.
Society is becoming more fearful and mistrusting of each other every day.
I blame the news media and their sensationalism for much of it.
Don
the mom was kinda a bitch
Of course, it's from my viewpoint.
She probably just thought she was being "protective."
Don
If she had written the story, I probably would have been described as lurking in the shadows of the lobby, wearing a trench coat.
Perspective, don't you know.
Don