...Behind Me at the Starbucks in Market Square at 7:35 AM this Morning -
I'm happy you have a hobby. I have hobbies. I write for this little blog. I'm learning how to play Lego Star Wars on the Wii (or I will if I ever get the time. I've had the system almost a week and no time to play. But I digress...). I read. I go to the gym and ride my bike. I play with my cats and spend time with my husband. I'm sure there are other things I do that I just can't think of right now.
Your hobby? Passive-aggressively food and fat shaming complete strangers ahead of you in line, who happen to purchase a piece of low-fat strawberries and cream coffee cake? NOT OK. NOT even close to OK. NOT even on the same planet, in the same solar system, in the same universe as OK.
I imagine you think I am stupid, which is why you raised concerns over my purchase of the low-fat strawberries and cream coffee cake. I imagine you believe that I'm the sort of uneducated food consumer who can not reason out that a food item with the words "cream" and "coffee cake" in it is probably not as "low-fat" as it claims to be. It was so nice of you to consider my feelings by raising this issue with the baristas instead taking it up directly with me. We would not want to be rude after all. How wonderful that you are able to harness the awesome power of the series of tubes to go out to the Starbucks website and look up the caloric information for this specific piece and be able to whip it out while in line, as I was paying for my grande skim chai and low-fat strawberries and cream coffee cake.
Do you know that I first contemplated the purchase of the artisan cheese danish? I shudder, nay, perish at the thought of your brain exploding in reaction to the notion that someone would actually buy and enjoy an item that, on any given day, exceeds the recommended fat allowance for a person of my gender and age.
Naturally, paying for my purchase was not enough to get away from you. Instead I had to stand and listen to your lecture on the Starbucks energy drink and its overabundance of calories whilst I waited for my grande skim chai. I kept waiting for your commentary on the drink I ordered, but tragically nothing came of it, at least not while I remained in the store.
Oh strange woman standing behind me in the Starbucks line, you are singularly the most rude person I have ever encountered. You have taken the top spot away from the friend of my in-laws, who upon hearing my comment that we lived near an excellent Italian bakery (in my old Pittsburgh neighborhood, not my current one), looked me up, looked me down, then said "You better stay away from that place or you'll lose your nice figure". He has been demoted to second place. Congratulations!
In closing, I owe you an apology. I said some not-very-nice things about you once I reached work. Instead of rising above your effort to shame me into putting down the pastry, my immediate response was to lower myself to your level with negative comments about your appearance. Which makes me equally wrong, even if you were not there to hear what I said. Please accept that my comments were made out of anger and I regret them. After some reflection I realized that your behavior spoke more about your personal insecurities then they did about my eating habits.
Delightful. One of my friends told me about one time some twenty or thirty years ago when he was waiting for a train in Philadelphia and a kindly stranger explained that he was opening the lid to his coffee wrong. The stranger even went so far as to take the coffee out of his hands to show him the proper way. Continuing the conversation they were having, my friend McMahon said, "I can see why your wife is divorcing you."
ReplyDeleteAs much as I love the punchline, McMahon is also the kind of guy who occasionally insults people who don't deserve it. I prefer to silently enjoy the the ignorance that surrounds us.