Road Rage, Age Rage

Life in the Boomer Lane pulled out of a parking lot last week, onto a street at a busy intersection. She was unable to totally straighten her car as she entered the street, so it was at a slight angle. An ambulace came down the street in the opposite direction, and suddenly, a car appeared in the lane next to LBL. The car was plastered with a happy illustration of a puppy and the words above the illustration proclaimed in cheerful aliteration something about dog care (Puppy Palace?  Happy Hounds?  Doggie Detailing?).

LBL moved forward about one or two inches, attempting to straighten her car before the light turned green.  The Carefree Canines window rolled down. From the other car’s driver’s seat, LBL became vaguely aware that somebody was screaming in her direction, at a decibel level that was truly impressive.

After an introductory identificattion of LBL, loosely translated as “You fornicating part of the body located in the buttocks region woman of ill repute…” the driver continuted, “I was moving over because of the ambulance and you, you fornicating female dog keep trying to bump my car…”

Loyal Readers may now imagine a steady screeching stream of abusive language travelling from the Marvelous Mutt’s car into LBL’s car, as the two cars waited for the light to change.   The driver punctuated her tirade by giving LBL the finger. LBL, always the soul of reason during any kind of confrontation, simply stared back, admiring the large Fido cartoon on the side of the car.  Her only thought was that this young woman must have been having a really bad day. A delinquent daschund?   A recalcitrant rottweiler?  A lazy lab? The possibilities were endless.

The driver of Waggy Washings then screwed up her face and gave LBL the finger. The light turned green, and, with one last irate expression, she started to step on the gas. But just before she attempted to shoot through the intersection, she hurled one final epithet at LBL, the one that would stay with LBL long after the rest of her words would become a (sort of) dim memory:

AARP!!!!!

(Loyal Readers may now imagine that word in really large font, and the letters maybe wiggling or jumping up and down or something.)

LBL had been marked. She was no longer merely a feces-consuming, unattractive, female dog. She was now an OLD feces-consuming, unattractive, female dog.

This was LBL’s second experience with age used as a perjoritive.  Her first was a response to a blog she posted some years ago about Kanye West. She and the commenter had a civilized, productive off-blog exchange after that, and the young woman apologized.

LBL hopes that she will  not experience more of this kind of thing in the years to come.  She will, instead,  content herself with being grateful that “AARP!” came at the end of the young woman’s tirade, in the form of a punctuation mark, rather than at the beginning.  She had obviously exhausted her ready supply of primary curse words, and AARP was merely a fallback.  So LBL chooses to believe.