Confidential to the mover guy, code name Sinbad, for the really huge gold hoop earring in your right lobe (and dude: what was up with THAT?): I COULD HAVE really given you what for. I wasn’t afraid of you. If you bother me again, I’m going to knock you upside the head with my OED. Just so you know.
I am not a mouse. I’m just sayin’, in case anyone needed to know. I’ve got a lousy, though quiet, temper. I don’t yell anymore, but I have a reader’s vocabulary and a sharp eye for people’s soft bits. I have a rotten, conniving heart, and if I tell you off, it will be in words in excess of three syllables, delivered in a straight-faced monotone that will flay your flesh from your bone. I’ve been known to blister paint. And, I’ve got a mean sucker punch and shin kick that I haven’t gotten the use of in years.
People who remember some of the towering rages of my childhood have made it their dubious business to take me aside from time to time, and Tell Me How To Treat My Man. “Don’t speak to him like that,” my older sister hissed. “Did you just call him stupid?” “Oh, be nice or he might dump you for me,” my eldest sister says snidely. My mother sends me websites on anger management and writes me long letters about what makes a happy home. (Okay, full disclosure, I haven’t gotten one of those in, what, three years now? But I got another website a month ago) What they don’t comprehend is that THIS IS ME BEING NICE. Sheesh.
Which is why Scotland has been a bit of a challenge for me. It’s not the country, so much. I can do rain and endless darkness all right. It’s …some of the people.
There’s a ridiculous stereotype of the merry Englishman and the dour Scotsman. I’ve rarely found the truth in that, most Scots aren’t dour at all. Dour indicates a certain silence, and the OED lists gloom, dullness, obstinacy and stupidity as definitions, none of which apply (except for stupidity, which applies equally to all nations). It’s what people here in Glasgow say that gives Scots their reputation. It’s not so much dour as sour. Acidic, even. Worse than me.
“‘t’s fookin ridiculous, is what it is,” the mover said as he hefted the box.
I frowned and looked away. When he’d first come and started slinging boxes over his shoulder, I’d asked him why he hadn’t brought a dolly to cart them down to the truck. Sure, we had a lift to carry him down the four flights of stairs, but to come with no gloves, no back belt, and no dolly seemed beyond foolhardy to me. However, I’d noticed that some Glaswegian guys — secure in their disbelief in the overcoat and the umbrella — are also great disbelievers in eye protection and gloves – and a back belt? Please. Real men get hernias.
The mover hefted another box and exploded in blasphemous rage. “Jesus Christ, this is a fookin’ nightmare!”
“I told the scheduler that it was boxes of books,” I said to the room at large. No one was actually acknowledging that I was in the vicinity, but I felt the lame need to defend myself. “I am sorry, but I did — “
“‘t’s a fookin disgrace!” the man snarled. He glared at me. “Don’t you know anythin’? You put books in wee small boxes, small so I could pick up two under my arms, and run with them. That’s how you do it.” He put his hands on his hips and stared at me pugnaciously. “How the fookin hell do you expect me to pick this up?”
“You could leave it,” I said, feeling perspiration prickling down my back. I hoped my voice was calm. I was alone in a house with three red-faced, meaty-fisted choleric looking men, one of whom had been pissing and moaning since they’d arrived. “If it’s too heavy to lift safely, you could just leave it.”
He did that little you’ll-blink-first stare-down-for-supremacy thing, then muttered something else and turned away to test the weight of another box. “Jesus fookin Christ,” he roared, ” you’re a fookin disgrace!” He stalked out, hands empty of anything.
Can I tell you that this went on for forty-five minutes?
The mover felt he was within his right to tell me just how badly I’d done – and okay, I’m direct, and if you really annoy me, I’ll do my best to let you know. But I won’t swear at you, and I’m not used to people swearing at me. Seems odd, now that I think of it. My father would call me stupid, scream at me to hurry up and wash/cook/clean something, smack me and rant about what a slob and lackwitted worthless human being I was, but he never swore. Ever. Mind you, it might have made him feel better, but he felt that it was against the Christian Father’s Code. Apparently there’s nothing in there about all the other stuff.
I made a point of not living under the same roof as my father ever again three months after I turned sixteen. I think what I hate the most about moving — and traveling — and all ’round leaving the house — is that I am at the mercy of petty, evil, vicious men with bad haircuts and big stupid hoop earrings.
I really hope I don’t have to move again for awhile. And trust me, if I do? I’ll pack my books in small boxes just so I don’t have to go upside some hung over ignoramus’ head.