The other day I was telling two good stories and I realized I probably never told them here on the blog.  I didn’t find them with some quick searches, so hopefully they are new.  I should say that nobody has tried to punch me in the face recently, these are both pretty old stories.

Story the First, in which I get punched in the face:

Shortly after I had learned to drive (I think I was about 17 or so), I was waiting in a long line of traffic over a bridge. Basically, there were two lanes of traffic over the bridge, but at the end of the bridge one lane was turn only.  Since most people wanted to go straight, traffic gets very backed up in that lane, while the other was mostly empty. However, you can turn right from the turn lane and then turn left into a shopping center, go through the parking lot, and then come back out on the main road. They had lots of signs up saying not to do that, so I tried not to.  But sometimes, when you just couldn’t take it anymore, you had no choice.

So I had been waiting for quite some time in the straight lane and I finally decided to go in the turn lane. Unfortunately, on my ’87 Celebrity there was no side mirror on the passenger side.  Since traffic stretched behind me for some ways, I couldn’t see very far back in the other lane.  I slowly began inching out when suddenly a car appeared and roared by me.  Because I was going so slowly and watching for just this case, I hit the breaks and didn’t get out.  As the guy flew buy I could see him angrily shouting at me, but I didn’t think much of it and after he passed I successfully pulled into the turn lane.

After a moment I saw that he had gotten out of his car, blocking traffic, and was walking back towards me. He was huge! When he got to my car I (stupidly) rolled down my window. He began shouting at me, saying things like, “Do you know how expensive my car is?” So right there I think you know the caliber of man I was talking to. I tried to make two points, 1) I didn’t actually hit his car, and 2) given that I had no side mirror, I believe (and still believe now) that I did the correct thing, which was the best I could with what I had. I didn’t have much time to make these points however, since he then clocked me in the face. Then he calmly turned around, got back in his car, and drove away. Maybe after he got the initial rage out by punching me, he realized he was a hulking, roided out adult with an expensive car and I was a nerdy kid in a piece of junk. Or maybe not. It wasn’t much consolation to me at the time.

Story the Second, in which I almost get punched in the face, but not quite:

The first place I lived in Pennsylvania had a shared laundry room. I hope you, gentle reader, have never had the unfortunate experience of using such a setup. The laundry is always full when you want it, the equipment doesn’t work and it is costly to use. Having come to this place directly out of college, it wasn’t as foreign of an idea as I wished it to be, but it was what it was. Because drying takes so much longer than washing, there is always a backup with the dryers, forcing you to leave your wet clothes in the washer and keep checking on the dryers hoping that you get the one that just opened up before anybody else does.  So, one day, I went to check on the laundry and the dryers were full of dry clothes. “Fair enough,” I thought.  Perhaps the dryer just finished the second before I walked in the room.  You have to give the person the benefit of the doubt, even though it is more likely that the clothes had been sitting there for hours.  But when I came back 20 minutes later and the clothes were still in the dryer, I felt justified in moving them to the top of the dryer and putting my clothes in. Now, I should specify, I honestly didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I wasn’t doing it to spite the person, I honestly just thought that was the protocol. That’s how it worked in college. Tell me in the comments if you think it is weird to move someone’s laundry.

So anyway, after putting my laundry in the dryer I went back to my apartment. Shortly thereafter, there was a knock on my door.  When I opened it there was a very angry, very large man.  He was big enough that he filled the entire doorway.  He asked me if I moved the laundry and when I said that I had, he really layed into me.  How dare I this and he doesn’t know where my hands have been that and how dare I touch his wife’s clothes, etc. Since he seemed to be hung up on me being dirty, I offered to pay for him to re-wash his clothes. I don’t think he was listening to me. As he talked he was getting more and more angry until I felt certain a punch was eminent. Luckily, his wife appeared and literally pulled him away from me and into their apartment. (Luckily for him! 😉 :-P)

I spent the next few months living in fear of him.  If I was leaving and I heard them coming out of their appartment, I would hide in mine until they were gone.  One day, months and months later, we passed each other in the hall, where I couldn’t hide.  I had just gotten past him when he said, “Hey!”  I was thinking, “Oh no! Please tell me someone else didn’t move his laundry and he thought it was me!” But to his credit he actually apologized to me! I was quite shocked actually.

And to this day I doubt I would move anybody’s laundry. I am also extremely nervous to move anybody’s food out of the microwave at work!