Some People are Mean

(Tattered coat of not many colors features  right shoulder rip.)

I was standing in line at a local Birmingham brewery on a crowded Friday after work. There were two people trying to serve about 50 people at a time.

Guy at my right shoulder disturbs my reverie by tapping me on the shoulder.

“Nice jacket,” he says.

Slightly discombobulated by the compliment, I managed to get out, “Thanks.” I start to look at my jacket with new eyes. Oh this old thing,  I thought silently, surrendering to the force of flattery.

“Where did you buy it?” he asked.

I didn’t hear him at first and was frankly becoming confused by all of this attention from some random guy in a beer line, but I politely asked him to repeat the question.

“The coat, where’d you get the coat?” He was oddly smiling.

I mean this was an Alfani, brand of the esteemed Macy’s department store chain. But I didn’t tell him that. I was holding back a bit now – that would be my walk-off homerun. It’s an Alfani my man, I would shout  in jubilation..

I told him it was a little worse for wear and I believe I got it at a thrift store. I had been reading about the B-52’s and their thrift store chic for a post on my blog. So it was all that came to mind.

(I later remembered that  I really got it at a Ross bargain store in Northern California, which might have made it  even more chic). Not just a thrift shop but a multi-hundred store chain of cheap clothes and clothing rejects.

But somehow my body was telling me something my mind wasn’t processing.

My mind was telling me: Here’s a fellow human being, making a connection – that’s what life is all about.

My body had something else to say: Fists start clinching I move my feet to get square.

“Did you buy it all wrinkled and crumpled up like that,” he asked, touching the jacket with disdain and laughing at me, yes, at me, before turning away toward the bar.

At that time I realized I had a small rip on the back of my right shoulder right where he was standing.  Catherine had long ago pointed it out. But myself being an astute observer of popular culture knew that ‘rips’ and ‘tears’ were good. People BUY clothes like that, right?

But I was momentarily stunned as what just happened sank in. I stood there with a flood of reactions washing over me, shame, confusion and stupidity. How could I let someone do that to me?

Then I felt anger, thinking: “I’m going to knock his ass out.”

I quickly dismissed the dumb notion of violent retaliation, but I was sad for my reaction and for the victims of bullying who face far worse every day because of things they can’t control, their skin color, sexual orientation, weight, and heritage.

Not trying to get too heavy here. But I am a short-timer. I have Lewy Body dementia. And I find myself wanting everybody to live Rodney King’s dramatic call for getting along. I don’t think my emotions that day were the result of my disease. I think they were representative of what happens every day starting in houses where people yell, and at jobs where folks are demeaned.

It wasn’t that this ‘incident’ was so egregious or harmful. I’m a big boy at 57.

And yes, I believe I could’ve kicked his ass.

But that I would ever want to is what makes me sad.