A Tale of Two Incidents

After arriving home from the extremely overcrowded Bon Iver/Jenny Lewis concert for the Twilight Concert Series, Andrew said to me that the more he goes out in the public, the more he realizes he really dislikes most people. Although most concert goers (especially free concert goers) are hardly a sampling of upstanding humanity, I did, slightly, agree with him. “I’m glad you like me,” I said. “Who wouldn’t like you?” he asked.

As I contemplated my answer, I thought back to the girl whose nose I bit in nursery school in England. I also thought of the more recent incident of a lady giving me the evil eye during the Sundance screening of It Might Get Loud. Her evil eye was definitely the most dastardly I had ever witnessed, and I shrank back in my seat wondering what I could have possibly done to merit such a look. I was enlightened when she loudly confronted me afterward vehemently claiming I had talked during the whole movie. It absolutely wasn’t true (I hadn’t whispered more than two words), and Andrew defended me (I am non-confrontational to a fault) by telling the lady there was something wrong with her hearing and she was out of her mind. I eventually began to feel more sorry for her husband than for myself, who sunk as low as possible in his seat while his wife publicly denounced me. I only had to sit through a movie with her; he has to spend the rest of his life being humiliated by her.

Reflecting on both incidents, I decided that the former had probably forgotten about it (her mom and my mom still exchange Christmas cards every year), but I was sure the latter definitely remembered me with contempt, and Madame Defarge-style, went home and knit my name (and probably Andrew’s too) into a blanket hit-list of some sort.