I'm amazed at the recent rash of inexplicable and hilarious behavior of my fellow Montgomery County Residents (or "MCR's" as all previous Alachua County Residents or "ACR's" are prone to abbreviating). I've felt like I'm in some kind of anti-personality fight zone for the past 3 weeks based on some of the encounters I've had which I'll recount here for posterity as well as shear novelty, in three posts.

-------------------------------------------

2:47PM Verizon Parking Lot, Gaithersburg, MD July 8
While coming around one of those irritating roundabout intersections some french-curve loving architect decided to use to merge 10 roads into 4 entrances to adjacent parking lots, I put on my blinker to move into the lane that led to my exit. I got over, turned around briefly and did that "thank you" open plam head nod thing to thank the motorist because we're all dealing with potential motion sickness and she really didn't have to let me over. I drive deep into the parking lot allowing at least 2 pedestrians the right of way (one with a stroller) and finally into an empty area, no cars from at least 2 rows. Its then that I notice the car from the intersection has pulled up directly behind me and its pilot is a middle aged, slightly overweight woman (the kind you'd see getting Hagaan Das with her equally well-proportioned and collectively miserable friends).

I want to describe a little bit about how I see the world. It is not without cynicism that I cling to the notion that I will definitely witness some type of weirdness unfold before my very eyes. It's more like I deeply crave it but am resigned to be unfulfilled with my normal, daily intake, and even then mostly from the internet. And the people in my general surroundings manage to keep themselves fairly well in line: no toilet paper on the shoe; very little sitting on benches with clearly marked "wet pain" signs; even less instances of poorly serviced neon signs forming offensive words unintentionally. But I hold fast to the idea that I could find myself in the middle of an ironic situation or even the victim of one. Thus, when a situation goes from being normal to "slightly un-normal", I take special joy in being able to push it completely over the edge and see what happens. In suburbia, what can it hurt?

It's for this reason that I purposefully sat in my car for something like 30 seconds, pretending to mess with my phone while secretly watching her cock her pudgy neck at me in my rear view. I figured this would communicate that a) I was fully aware of her but didn't care or b) I was unaware of her because she's not important enough to notice. After a short time of feeling her out, I opened my car door desively and stuck out my foot, but hung there, watching as her car door opened in response to mine, but she kept her body inside, still watching.

This was fantastic.

So I shut my door and just looked at her, but she had already flinched - I had her, knew her game. We were shadow boxing.

My next move was to exit my vehicle and pretend to pay really close attention to where I was intending to go. No sooner had I slammed my door, she was upon me.

"You KNOW, sir..." she began, walking toward me as she tried to play off that this was all so spontaneous. "You KNOW, sir, cutting people off in traffic can get someone killed."

I laughed - so THAT'S what this is about. Cutting someone off in traffic is rarely rewarded with admonishment, more of an act of Karma. So, I stopped, paused and waited, really waited for her to continue. Then I said, "Well, I guess thank you for making your point so clearly. I agree." Hold on, she's thinking.

I paused again, then shrugged and started walking but she followed me. I wasn't satisfying her, so she baited me again, "Well, I just hope it's not a family you kill and learn you lesson from..." Jesus Christ, Lady, there's a Starbucks right over there, go eat a crueler and read something inspirational off a napkin, okay? She kept going on about me, my attitude, etc, all the way to the sidewalk - this harpy of a woman, before I told her, "I sincerely hope you have a marvelous Sunday!"