Excuse me, sir, you dilapidated pile of dust

I consider myself a mannerly person, and reasonably pleasant. I say please and thank you, as in “Please, son, the fish does not need you to pet him,” and “Thank you, darling, but I don’t care for that particular piece of gum right now, so put it back in the cupholder.”

I try to avoid being terribly late, even if it means not showering, and I never, ever apply lipstick in public, though that probably doesn’t count because the Diva steals all my lipstick so I can never find it anyway.

(Note: My politeness at this time does not extend to the tradition of writing thank-you notes and responding to RSVPs in a timely manner. That’s just crazy talk.)

In return I like when other people are polite to me as well, though I don’t always expect it since my son routinely calls people “penis” and my daughter pushes people down if she believes they’re coveting her pink plastic Dora the Explorer phone.

I was nonetheless extremely shocked to be verbally assaulted by a decrepit old man in the grocery store the other day for a perceived breach of etiquette that was NOT my fault.

I was rolling my cart briskly down the cereal aisle at Publix when I came upon a traffic jam. I was in a bit of a hurry because it was nearly time to pick up the children from pre-school, and if I don’t time it right and the Tyrant stays too long in the Extended Day program, she becomes too ornery and throws things on the floor that the teacher demands she pick up and she won’t so she starts kicking the teacher and ends up in the principal’s office and it all goes to shit from there. You know what I mean.

I waited for a moment to see if somebody would move the carts blocking my way. I assessed the situation and determined that one of the carts belonged to the ancient guy behind me who was perusing the oatmeal. I didn’t want to bother him, plus I assumed it would take him about 30 years to even get to his cart, so I very casually (and gently!) eased his cart forward so I could get by. I was almost done with my passing maneuver when I heard him say, “OH, SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!”

I must tell you that my jaw still hurts from hitting the floor. I stopped, turned around and looked at him. “Excuse me?” I said, very politely.

And he said, “OH, I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING!” as he continued to pretend to look for oatmeal. I almost went over to help him because he clearly needed more fiber in his diet. But I was too flabbergasted. So I just continued on.

But my feelings were hurt! I don’t think anyone has ever said that to me! I reflexively began to analyze the phrase’s literal meaning, and found myself becoming quite uncomfortable at the notion of this man wanting to shove something up my ass. And what, exactly, did he have in mind?

I tried to hurry through the rest of the aisles, but somehow I kept running into him. Each time I passed him, I suffered a little jolt of anxiety. I stared at him to see if he recognized me, but either he was pretending not to see me or he was half-blind, which was entirely possible given his Stone Age appearance.

I finally made it to the checkout aisle, and was nearly done when he got into line behind me and started unloading his basket. Finally he looked at me, and I gave him the super scary stink-eye. Then I made a point of being extra polite to the checkout girl, thanked her profusely for the pleasure of letting me spend a hundred dollars on Cheez-Its and milk, and went on my way.

My trainer, Son of Sam, asked me if I could’ve taken the guy down. Well, yeah, of course. He was, like, 300 years old. If I had touched him, he would have turned to dust and I could have swept him out the door.

But that’s not the point. Actually, I’m not sure what the point is, other than I now know that not everyone thinks I’m as polite as I think I am, which makes me a little bit sad. In hindsight, I suppose I should have either asked him if I could move his cart for him or moved it as far away as possible and put strange items in it to confuse him and make sure he understood the unwritten rules of leaving a grocery cart unattended. At the time, however, I was just trying to get through the day, thinking that canned carrots are definitely a healthy substitute for fresh carrots and daily bathing for children clearly must be contra-indicated when the weather is cold.

When I went to boxing class that night, I punched my partner extra hard and felt much better about my encounter with the freaky rude decrepit old geezer, and confident about how I had handled it, because even though I gave him the super scary stink-eye he had probably forgotten the whole thing by then and thought I was flirting with him. And while I might have gotten some temporary satisfaction from marching straight up to him and asking him to just try shoving something up my ass, that might have led to some sort of physical altercation which would have caused some pile of something to make a huge mess, and some poor stock boy would have had to clean it up. And that would have been really rude.