Roles of the Rude!

I just made the mistake of re-reading my previous entry and now I have “cows are the moo-iest, gum is the chew-iest” stuck in my brain once again. I hate myself sometimes. Moving on…

So, speaking of malapropisms, as we were a couple of posts ago (keep up, people, work with me): yesterday, as I was driving home after picking Viva up from school, I saw in my rear-view mirror an SUV, gaining on me fast. We were on a curving residential street with speed bumps, so I was already going slowly*, and I was coming up to a stop sign, so I was slowing down. The SUV kept coming, and because it had its lights on (it was overcast), I could track its progress without really wanting to. In addition to driving quite fast, the driver was swerving all over the road.

*Please note -- and this should not surprise you if this blog has given you any concept of my personality -- I am not a slow driver. I actually generally drive over the speed limit, so the SUV was not gaining on me because I was driving at Granny Speed. He was probably doing 50 in a 35 mph zone. Although in the past, Will has told me I pilot my car like a fighter plane, I think I drive more mindfully now that Viva is with us, but that is another story, and I have digressed enough at this point.

I stopped at the stop sign, drove another few yards, went over another speed bump, and stopped at the red light. In my rear-view, I could see the SUV come tearing up behind me, and I spoke out loud: “Jeez, did you even stop at the stop sign? Try obeying the roles of the rude!”

“What you say, Mommy?” Viva asked, but by this point I realized what I had said and I was laughing at myself.

“This guy behind me is driving like a nut, and I meant to say he should follow the rules of the road, but I said roles of the rude instead. I guess he must be following the roles of the rude,” I said.

“He driving bad?” Viva said, craning her neck, of course, not getting it.

“He is a very bad driver, yes,” I said, still chuckling.

Roles of the rude. Use it, love it, embrace it.

In this same vein, after dropping Viva off at school yesterday, I had gone to the supermarket. In the parking lot, as I was loading my trunk, I heard this guy talking very loudly on his cell phone as he got out of his car and walked toward the store. A well-dressed older woman had just exited the store and as she approached the man with the cell phone, she suddenly lunged at him and screamed, “SHUT UP!” and kept walking. It was the funniest fucking thing ever. The beauty of it was that he kept talking, but incorporated it into his conversation: “This crazy woman just screamed at me from out of nowhere! No, I don’t know her, I’ve never seen her before in my life!” and then proceeded to laugh about it with some of the baggers who were standing outside on their break.

Roles of the rude. Seriously.