warpath

Two things:

1. I went to the combined Taco Bell/Pizza Hut place for lunch today, and in the booth behind me sat a woman and a bunch of her kids – several boys and a girl. I barely noticed them when I sat down, but as I ate I overheard a good deal of their conversations, which is how I figured out that of the kids, there was one girl. The mother got the food and presented it to her daughter, saying something like “Now, this has SALAD in it – isn’t that healthier than all that yucky pizza they’re eating?” The daughter didn’t respond, but I assumed she was nodding or something.

Later, as they were all eating and talking, the mother began to harp on the daughter a bit again about her diet, and how she was going to lose so much weight, and blah blah, and I started to think “gee, that’s kind of crappy, to be all Diet Nazi in the middle of Taco Bell with your kids, but maybe the girl really has a problem.” I didn’t notice if she was overweight or not, but generally I’m quite opposed to going all let’s-go-on-a-diet with children.

A little more chatter, a little more diet talk, and they were finished. As they got up to leave, I watched them out of curiosity to see this young girl who needed to lose some weight.

Two or three kids passed me, and then I saw the daughter.

She looked like she was about ten or eleven years old, and yeah, I guess she was a little pudgy.

Then she turned, and I saw her face clearly.

She had DOWN SYNDROME.

And her body was perfectly normal for a child with Down Syndrome, because fucking DUH, their chromosomal abnormality causes them to have a DIFFERENT BODY SHAPE than most kids, and there isn’t a whole hell of a lot that can be done about it. Not to mention the fact that she’s a CHILD and shouldn’t be forced to eat some sort of diet taco when her brothers are all chowing on pizza. And I absolutely wanted to tackle that misguided piece of shit mother and throttle the living shit out of her.

But I didn’t.

I was really upset and angry about it, though, and thought yet again about my opinion that lots of people are terrible parents.

2. On the way back from lunch, I stopped at the gas station and picked up a hitchhiker.

As I was driving back to work, I heard a buzzing that I initially dismissed, until I saw a shadow the size of an Army cargo plane out of the corner of my eye.

I looked in the mirror and saw one of the biggest fucking flying insects I’ve ever encountered. It was either some kind of bee or maybe a horsefly type thing, but either way it had overdosed on mutant growth hormones and was inches away from wrestling the wheel right out of my hands.

I screamed. I turned down the Foo Fighters so that I could monitor the Thing’s progress by listening to the buzzing.

Only my front windows are automatic, so I lowered them all the way and opened the sunroof and drove fast, hoping it would get carsick and fly out, but it didn’t. In fact, it eventually hunkered down on the back window ledge and watched me in the mirror. I watched it right back.

I might have looked at the road twice on that drive back.

When I got here, it wouldn’t fly out, and I didn’t want to fight it, knowing that our next interview would pull into the parking lot to see me screaming and flailing at a huge insect, so I closed the windows and the roof and left it in the car.

But I bet it won’t die by 5, so after this interview I’m going to have to run out there and see if I can wrestle it out of the car.

I’m going in with weapons this time.

And if I see that Bad Taco Bell Mother, I’ll take her down too.

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