Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Pulling a Trump

I've been raised not to create a scene, particularly in a public place. Sometimes I regret that.

It was the one thing that spoiled a very nice birthday dinner that Steve took me out to on Sunday. It was our current favorite restaurant and the food, as usual was fantastic. Our server was absolutely perfect, plenty of attention without being intrusive, knowing what we needed almost before we did.

In the direction I was facing, I had a complete view of a foursome halfway across the room. My guess is they were about our ages. The meal was over, and after sitting for over half an hour, it can be difficult to get knees and hips working again, not to mention with anything resembling grace.

We know about that. That's us too.

The presumed husband of the 1st pair slid out of their booth first, waiting for his female partner to work her way across the seat, stand securely, and start walking towards the restroom. Needless to say, there was none of the fluidity of a 20-year-old in her movements.

He let her precede him down the aisle, ostensibly a show of good manners. But there it ended. As he followed, by exaggerating her movements, he mocked her every infirmity, eyes on his male tablemate who was his primary audience. He apparently thought he was hilarious, and his cohort did nothing to disabuse him of this idea. He reminded me of nothing more than Trump's mocking of the disabled reporter during his campaign.

I run through the excuses in my mind: I was too far away. I wasn't spry enough to get up quickly and and approach him to chew him out, something starting with, "Hey, Asshole!" or similar. I wasn't skilled enough to lay him out on the floor - a major temptation, let me tell you. The restaurant was too noisy for yelling my contempt across to where he could hear it. Same with yelling over to his compatriot challenging him as to whether he actually thought his "friend" was funny.

I do feel fairly confident that, had I been the woman mocked and caught him at it, I could have turned around and "accidentally" stumbled into slamming a knee into the "wrong" location. After all, none of those parts were anything he was likely to get to use in the near future.

Feel free to define "near" as anywhere from 6 months to ever. And I could easily blame it on the clumsiness he'd been demonstrating to the world so entertainingly on my behalf.

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