revengeful

It's amazing that, a mere decade removed from the consistent and interdisciplinary rigors of secondary education, somehow my "knowledge" of everything I learned in middle school through college has been totally reduced to simple summary captions that a monkey could have memorized.

Geometry:  Perpendicular = my mom can park.  Parallel = my mom can't park.

Anatomy/Biology: Liver = Processes alcohol and resultant munchies.  Fallopian tubes = Chicago Bulls.

Literature:  Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo = Good at revenge.  Dostoevsky's Invisible Man = Sucks at revenge.

Sigh.  I randomly thought of this last allusion yesterday as I found myself at the distributing end of some poorly executed revenge.  I was trying to park my car during the heart of rush hour;  legit spots were few and far between, so I spent a solid half hour circling within the six block radius in each direction of my apartment, searching in vain. 

I was in the middle of making a U-turn substitute (completing an otherwise illegal U-turn by utilizing an open-ended driveway) at my typical (i.e., "cautious breakneck") speed, when a short fat bald man ran up to the passenger side, slammed his chubby hand on the car's hood, and shouted:

"Hey, slow down!  Bitch ..."

How totally bizarre and uncalled for!  I hadn't come remotely close to hitting him or anything else.  After all, had I actually done so, his mangled body splattered across my tires would certainly not have been in any condition to shout at me.

Nevertheless, anyone who's ever met me knows I'm not one to stand idly by when someone, however stupid, picks a fight, however stupid.  So I did what any reasonable medium-to ill-tempered person would do in that situation. 

I screeched to a halt and shouted back: "Say that to my face, you ... [edited]."  The remainder was a filthy, classless and otherwise awesome outburst of epic, Tarantinian proportions, comprising:

• the f-word;
• the f-word as adjective;
• both c-words;
• all three p-words;
• the f-word several more times; and
• various conjugations of both "suck" and "lick."

Had there been any bad words that started with Greek letters or numbers, I would have used them too. 

Had there been a massive flock of birds standing nearby, they would have flown into sky cinematically as I shouted. 

Had a full orchestral ensemble been sitting in my back seat, they would have spontaneously burst into the cataclysmically combative strains of "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana to accompany perfectly my dramatic insults.

Most unfortunately for me, the impact of my tirade was somewhat dampened because I hit a wrong button and rolled down my left rear, rather than right front, window. 

In other words, I don't think the guy was actually able to hear anything that I actually said.  I probably just looked like a cat lady who has misplaced her cats and resorted to talking to herself.

Once you've made an ass of yourself, what else is there to do? 

Had I not been in a car, and had he actually heard me, either he would have cowered in shock and backed down.... or else we would have come to blows.  But since I was in a vehicle, I couldn't very well elevate the fight further -- I would've had to actually nudge him with the car, which most would consider a crime, or else get out of the car and chase him on foot, which all would consider totally f-word-ing stupid. 

So anyway, I ended up just giving a weak stinkeye out of the still-closed passenger side window and driving off like the Invisible Man that I am.  Why even bother to learn bad words if my deployment of same is going to be so ineffectual?