42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

I lost my temper.

It had been a long work week. Not particularly bad, but maybe I’d just forgotten everything. Last night, the fire alarm went off twice. We probably spent an 1.25 hours total waiting to be let back into the clearly not burning building.

So we go out to a chain place to indulge in an overpriced drink and a little bit of food. We got there and remembered why we stopped going there. It’s a magnet for college kids trying to mate for the night. It’s crowded. It’s loud. You can’t hear anything.

Everything was fine until the guy at the table behind me started banging his chair against mine. I’d guess he was just being animated. Bang. Bang.

I looked back at him. Bang.

I took the high road at first. I moved my chair a few inches in. Bang bang bang. He actually took the opportunity to move himself back a little and kept hitting my chair. It was like a kid constantly kicking your seat in an airplane.

I had enough. It was loud. I started shouting. I don’t know if he could hear me; I could barely hear myself.

“Will you stop that! Stop hitting my @##@$@#$ chair!” and similar language.

Because it’s me, I didn’t turn around and say that to his face, nor politely tap him on the shoulder and tell him to stop. I’m not good at confrontation.

So for added effect, I banged my chair against his several times.

It stopped. For a while, anyway.

Friend Sarah came in late, walking across the street from her house to the restaurant. I wasn’t going to say anything to her about it, because I was feeling hyperaware and tense and sorta guilty about it. In fact, I didn’t enjoy the rest of my meal. My shoulders were all locked up and I wished that the people would leave.

But then the banging started up again. I told her about it and asked her to give the guy a stare. She did, but said he was too busy macking on the girl next to him.

I waited a couple more minutes of banging, but then finally decided that letting him do that again was not going to work for me.

So I banged my chair several times against him.

Dead silence at the other table.

And then, very loudly and clearly, “You know what?”

But apparently, he didn’t know what, and I didn’t care, either. He did nothing, but the banging did stop.

Later, he went to the bathroom. Came back, and apparently slid his chair away from mine, because when I left, I noticed they were probably five or six inches apart.

Was I rude, yeah? But I’m tired of people thinking they are entitled to taking up an entire space without consideration of other people.

• It’s like the people in the grocery store who take up an entire aisle while their kids run around screaming.
• Or the people on the cell phones, like the one at another restaurant the other day, where a woman was telling her friend, very loudly, about an ingrown piercing (I have to go to the hospital. It’s like a big meatball with nothing inside).
• Or the people trying to merge into your lane while you’re in it, in a big SUV, who then honk back at you and wave their arms after you’ve laid on your horn several times and applied the universal salute.

You’re not the center of the universe. I’m not the center of the universe. So we have to share space. And that means not being a jerk. Because I guess I’m going to have to tell you if you are.