Mean People Suck!

A couple of months of ago, we had a very exciting event here in Redondo Beach. The Amgen Tour of California bike race ran its final stage around loops of our neighborhood and finished just blocks away from our house. The police notification we received announced the streets that would be closed around us. There were plenty. My husband and I were delighted. It’s rare to be able to ride your bike car-free around here. We headed out early to take full advantage of the clear course before the race started.

We spent the day riding from point-to-point on the course being sure to stop at the bottom of the PV hill to see the riders climb as well as at the bottom to feel them whoosh by on their descent. In between lunch at the pier and coffee at a corner café on the course we took in the sprint section and of course the Finish Line.

At said Finish Line the mood was festive. Excitement crackled in the air as my husband and I edged towards the course in hopes of glimpsing the winners fly by. The crowd cheered, waved their banners and tinkled their cowbells. It reminded me of an alpine downhill ski race. I wanted to be part of it so set off to find the source of the cowbells. By that time, the crowd behind us had thickened. I searched along the line of people blocking my way back to the expo and the cowbells until I found a friendly looking female face.

“Excuse me,” I said in my most affable polite voice and indicated the two-inch gap between her and her husband, “would you mind if I squeezed through?”
“No,” she said. “We’ve had twenty people a minute trying to get past and we’re not moving any more.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I was so unprepared for her response that I failed to have any smart-ass comeback ready. Instead I wished her a nice day and moved to the gentleman next to her, who was happy to take the half step needed to make room for me to pass.

But the woman had already ruined my day. I was far too indignant to go looking for a cowbell. How could she have been so hostile after I’d been so polite and reasonable? If twenty people per minute had come through, why didn’t she just make a bigger gap so that she wouldn’t have to move each time? It all seemed so logical to me, but not to this woman. Here was a woman who was so angry, so close to the end of her rope that in that split second she decided she wasn’t going to take it any more and she wasn’t going to move for me. I was glad that she wasn’t behind the wheel of an oversized SUV barreling towards a yellow light and I wasn’t in my Honda Civic preparing to make a left.

If I could have one superhero power, it wouldn’t be the ability to fly or to scale tall buildings. I’d wish for an automatic invisible force field that I could flip open at the first sign of malice. I could protect my happy days from mean people and deflect their spite right back onto them. Childish, I know, but at least my feelings wouldn’t be hurt.