I went shopping on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas. I was still bleary-eyed and emotionally wrung-out, barely able to concentrate, but I needed to pick up some things at the store. So there I was at Target, walking down one of the main aisles. This young guy was walking toward me on a crash course, as if he were playing chicken with me. I had to swerve my cart to avoid him, and he clearly didn’t care, and that pissed me off. In my head I said, “Next time I hit you, asshole.”
Would you believe that not a minute later he and I were once again traveling in opposite directions in an aisle, this time a narrower side aisle, and that he was walking straight down the very middle, taking up all the space, eyes glued to his phone? The Universe was clearly challenging me to stand behind what I’d said. I thought to myself, “This is it. You said you’d hit the asshole, and now’s your chance. Hit him!”
But of course I swerved to avoid him again. Anyone who knows me will be unsurprised by that. I am very predictably non-confrontational.
When I told this story to my mom, she said that I should have stopped walking and let him hit me. And maybe she’s right. As girls we learn not to take up space, but now I am a woman over 50. Have I not earned the right to claim my space and yield it to no one, even when it’s just a narrow strip of space in a Target aisle? And hadn’t that young man better learn to watch where he’s going before he finds himself in real danger and not merely at risk of a little embarrassment and/or minor bruising? There’s nothing like walking into a thing to teach you to pay better attention to your surroundings. Certainly that would have been a more effective lesson than me telling him to watch where he was going, which was another option I chose not to take. And perhaps, had I stood my ground, he would have swerved to avoid me. Who knows.
I say these things and mean them. Still, I know that were it to happen again I’d probably swerve again, and I have to wonder if that’s a bad thing, both for me and for the assholes of this world. Will we none of us ever learn better?