Today I had a writer's guild meeting at a community center which has a skating rink, an auditorium and several meeting rooms. There was an art and craft show going on as well as several other events, so the parking lot was nearly filled. I pulled onto the lot and got behind a car with an elderly woman driver who could barely see over the steering wheel. I tried to be patient as she inched along at two miles per hour. Half way across the parking lot, the car behind me whipped around me and also the car in front of me. I hate to admit, but after creeping along and going nowhere fast, I too passed the old lady. I parked my car at the far end of the parking lot across from the driver who had whipped around me like a bat out of hell. The middle aged woman walked alongside me and bellowed into the wintry breeze, "I can't stand people who poke and don't know how to drive. Worse, I hate people who are afraid to walk a distance."
I looked at her and said, "That little old woman didn't look like she was able to walk at all, much less this far."
That crabby hag replied, "Then she should have gotten up earlier this morning."
I said, "You know, I try to be more understanding, although I must say, I got impatient too and I also drove around her. What are you here for?"
"Well, you see, there's a couple who picks glass out of a creek and tumbles it till it's smooth and then makes jewlery out of it. I always wanted some, but never had the money, but today I do, so I'm going in there to buy me some creek glass."
I wanted to pick up that broken bottle from the gutter and say ...
But, I am really trying to be more tolerant and understanding.
If you watch the sit com, Mike and Molly, on Monday evenings, and you know who Mike's mother is, then you've got a good picture of the whack job, excuse me, the woman I met today and her gruff manner of speaking.
17 comments:
I don't know Mike and Molly, but I have a good idea of the impatience and self-importance of this woman.
Pearl
I hope that woman has family who love her despite her gruff manner...and I wonder if she'll be as full of herself when SHE can't walk across the parking lot.
They are everywhere and I try NOT to be one. However, today I might of been when 9 items I picked up from the dairy case were three weeks out of date and I have talked nicely about this problem for nearly two years!!!GRRRRR
Hi Linda...
There are people like that everywhere.
Didn't you feel like saying, "Chickie, take that glass and put it up...." well, you can fill in the blanks. ha ha haha Susan
The rumor that it was me is unsubstantiated. I've always had enough money for creek glass.
Goodness! Where have I been? I missed the naked man (and now I won't be able to chew Bazooka gum, either),your fit and fantastic poem, and writing lessons.
But I'm happy to see you're practicing tolerance--I practice it, too. Not sure I've quite got the hang of it yet. ;-)
You have to feel kind of sorry for her though, don't you? She apparently has no idea she's a butthead!
And who knows? That doddering old woman might have been a genius and a treasure to have a conversation with. She might be changing lives right and left with her love, but no one has the patience to slow down and see.
Funny that other woman is focused on the beauty of creek glass, but missing beauty of life.
Life is what we make it, right?
And best of all, the rude woman was about to buy glass from a bottle from a gutter that took a detour through a rock tumbler. She sure fell for the creek part! What goes around comes around.
These kinds of people are everywhere. They lurk under creek rocks!!
I too watch Mike and Molly, so I have the perfect image of what the woman was like...
Hopefully, we will all get to be that old and slow at some point.
It sucks to be old (right, Bill? ;)and it's a nice thing when we can be patient when seniors slow us down...
I'm reading a book now that has a chapter on patience. It's an art we need to work at perfecting. One of the book's suggestions...pick the longest line at the grocery store relax, and observe the world. Just another way of stopping to smell the roses, eh?
Pat
Critter Alley
I've never watched Mike and Molly, but I think I may have to start. Linda, one thing I've noticed about you is that you are always as gracious in person as you are in writing, and who knows--maybe your patience and tolerance and kindness unwhacks those whack jobs just a little bit?
There are some people you just can't get through to and the sad thing is they probably wouldn't even notice if you were as rude as them. Your way is best:-)
Cheers to the little old woman in the car for actually being out and about. Boo to the woman wanting creek glass.
Oh and cheers to you Linda.
Julia Gordon-Bramer's comment made me think of a passage I read in one of Eckhart Tolle's books:
Tolle recalls a time in the 1970s when he was a graduate student at Cambridge University. Each day at lunch, he saw the same severely disabled man surrounded by students. A few weeks later, their eyes met and, Tolle says, “I saw that his eyes were clear. There was no trace in them of unhappiness. I knew immediately he had relinquished resistance; he was living in surrender.” Years later, he saw the same man on the front of a magazine. The unknown man was Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s most famous theoretical physicists. Tolle writes, “There was a beautiful line in the article that confirmed what I had sensed when I looked into his eyes many years earlier. Commenting upon his life, he said (now with the help of the voice synthesizer), ‘Who could have wished for more?’”
-From http://www.success.com/articles/307-on-the-bookshelf-eckhart-tolle
Post a Comment