We got the Mustang back from the jaws of oblivion. Thursday October 14 we came home after a Thrashers game to find a voicemail from the cops telling us that they had the car. Of course we couldn’t get any other info until the next day, but it was back home by Friday afternoon.
It appears that the slack asses at Emory University Police Department just couldn’t manage to put all those pesky numbers into the stolen car database, so our car sat at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in south Atlanta for a week before it was towed to a lot. There was minimal damage, which is a damn good thing since it was not covered for theft. We’ll get whatever the insurance company decides to give us for the damages and I guess Andy will ask for a new car stereo for Christmas.
I was accosted by a Jesus Freak the other day at the laundromat. Believe it or not, that is the first time I’ve actually had to fend off a fire and brimstone fundamentalist christian with a gleam in his eye. And let me tell you, it was the most annoying AND the most fun thing I’ve had happen in a while!
I was stuffing a washer when this guy pulls up in a big truck with a Jesus Saves license plate. I noticed, but hey, this is the Bible Belt baybee and you learn to overlook these things. But then the guy walked in and he was wearing a Jesus Saves T shirt as well. Ok, NOW I am decidedly not looking at him and trying to look busy with the laundry.
He gets his clothes and chats with the Taiwanese guy who runs the place then he leaves. “Whew!” I think, as I add laundry soap.
Then he comes back in. “Oh, BALLS!!”, I think, as he approaches.
“That isn’t your little red Honda out there is it?”, he asks.
“Yes, it is”, I reply, thinking that perhaps he had tagged it while backing out or something.
“But you look like a very intelligent woman”, he says.
Seeing the evangelical gleam in his eye, I cringe inwardly and say, “Ummm, yes?”
“Well, I just noticed that you have that blasphemous evolution fish on your car…”, he ventures.
Feeling my blood start to boil and the FIGHT response start to well up, I cut him off, “Look, DON’T accost me, please.”
“Wha–?” he replies.
“I said, do NOT accost me!” I exclaim.
“Well, you don’t have to be hostile…” he sniffs. “I was just saying that you couldn’t possibly believe that because you look so intelligent.”
Uh-oh, he went there. He actually went there! Taming my anger as best I could, I respond, “I have multiple Degrees, if you must know. You are judging me and implying that I am not intelligent because I have different views than you. Your intolerance simply indicates your inherent intellectual ineptitude and I do NOT want to hear it. I do not harass anyone for their personal views and neither should you.”
He stands there, mouth agape. I assume he is trying to figure out what I just said, seeing as how many of the words are multisyllabic. After a moment, he says, “Believing in that stuff will send you to hell!”
“What if I don’t believe in hell?”, I retort.
Totally aghast at this, he asserts, “Well, I can show you in the Bible where–“.
I cut him off with, “Oh, you mean that book written and edited by King James and his friends?”
Losing all semblance of civility (and sense, I might add), he strides toward the door and shouts, “You’ll burn in hell for that!! You’re a lost soul!!”
To which I look at him and say, “Oooo, I’m SOOOO scared!!”, thus throwing him into a frenzy of shouting Hallelujahs all the way to his truck.
Can you believe that shit? Here it is 1999, and these freaks still have the balls to publicly accost people!
I must say, tho, that I felt immense satisfaction in the knowledge that I upset him far more than he upset me.
Well, that’s it for the Extra edition of the Rant this week.
