So apparently I walked right past Jane Espenson today, because I was staring at the guy she was walking with, thinking, “There’s Doyle from Gilmore Girls! And on my other side I’m walking past Peter Krause for the fiftieth time!”
Sorry, Jane. I really wanted to meet you.
That’s a much better story than what happened to me yesterday, when in less than an hour someone leaned out of his truck window to give me the double bird, a man shouted, “Go home, please!” and then a woman hit me. She came up behind me, jogging down the street, and punched my sign as she passed, causing it to hit me in the back of the head.
It took a second for me to realize what had happened. That the sign stick smacking me in the back of my head wasn’t due to my own klutziness, but because the woman passing me on the street on my left, clad in neon green spandex and a visor, had just hit me. With her hand. Because she didn’t want to either pass me on the right (I was standing at a crosswalk), or spend any of the ten minutes she’d spent running up toward me to say, “On your left!”
Instead she took a swing at me. At my sign, which was a part of me.
I drove home furious with myself. I wish I wasn’t the kind of person who immediately thinks, “Gee, I guess I was in her way. I should be more careful. I wish she hadn’t scared me so much. My head really hurts now. She hit it hard. She must be mad about the strike. Hasn’t she known we are on her jogging path for the past six weeks?”
I wish I had been ballsy enough fast enough that I’d have thrown down my purse and just took off after her and fell into a pace next to her as we ran. “Hi,” I’d say, falling into marathon mode. “I was just wondering what makes you think you have the right to commit battery? Do you have any right to hit me? From behind? A complete stranger who was standing at a crosswalk? Do you seriously think you have the right to hit me? And where are we going? Because I’m going to keep running until you are just as scared as you made me, you egotistical asshole. How dare you hit someone. Anyone. How dare you punch a picketer who wasn’t even in your way? I was on the curb! You were running on the busy street! What is wrong with you? Apologize to me!”
Man, all the way home, I was driving and cursing at myself. Why didn’t I run after her? Why didn’t I make her apologize? Why did I let her literally do a hit and run?
I’m still mad. I can’t seem to get over it. Every time I think of it I get just as mad as I was driving home. I mean, who does that? Who hits a stranger while they’re jogging? She punched my sign! Like I was a mannequin or something! Like a target!
Calm down. Think nice thoughts. Peter Krause.
About that. This morning when Jenny and I were walking she did that thing where she talks without sound and all you hear are these little pops and clicks of her tongue (It’s crazy, and it makes me giggle), and she mouthed, “That’s Peter Krause.” And I looked at the guy in front of us who was wearing sunglasses and a skull cap and a SAG shirt and I was like, “Oh, yeah! Good eye! Let’s walk near him.”
We did, trying to make sure it was him, and the second he said something to someone we both looked at each other and said, “No.” Not him.
An hour later, Peter Krause magically appeared. Standing next to fake Peter Krause! And Jenny balled up her fist and shouted, “Dammit! I just wasted a wish! I wonder what will never happen to me now that I made Peter Krause appear.”