Monday, June 18, 2007

Superfreaky

Today I had an appointment, and Google maps sent me out of Boston on the Mass Pike. I generally don't take the Pike since I don't feel like I should pay a toll to take a major highway. After some construction worker forgot to cover up a detour sign to the Pike and after I missed a turn in Back Bay, I finally got on the Pike in Chinatown. The traffic was light, it was sunny and warm, and I was listening to the radio and generally enjoying myself, despite my road rage while trying to find the goddamn on-ramp downtown.

I got to the Allston/Brighton tolls and fished a dollar out of my wallet. I rolled down my window and stuck the bill out the window.

"Hi," I said the the middle-aged woman collecting tolls.

"Let's not talk," she said, barely raising her voice enough to be rude to me.

I was too stunned to respond to her bitchery while I was in the tollbooth. I figured I'd extend some human decency to a woman who probably gets sniped at by drivers and probably makes jack shit because I felt like it was a good thing to do. And how does she respond? By not even acknowledging my greeting politely or ignoring me, but by being a giant bitch. Fine. I hope someone threw a milkshake on you after I left, you nasty wench.

After taking Route 9 back into the city to avoid the milkshake-soaked super-bitch on the Pike, I got on the T to head home. A stop after I boarded, I noticed a tall, scrawny white boy wearing saggy jeans, a white wifebeater, black aviator shades, and had lots of piercings in his ears and face. His white loosely-laced shoes paced the length of the train, and he eventually stopped at the horizontal railing near the big windows on the old Green Line cars and started doing chin ups while watching himself in the window. I started to laugh openly, and looked around to make sure someone else was witnessing this. Across from me, a half-dead office drone nodded solemnly, as if to say fear not, you aren't imagining this. I wanted to believe him, but when the Eminem clone got off the bar and said "I'm so fucking hot" to his reflection I almost thought I had to be imagining it. Classes are over at Emerson-- this couldn't be a Jamie Kennedy Experiment-esque bit of comedy, could it? It must have been. No one person could exhibit so many signs of douchebaggery unless it's a satire. I hope.

1 comment:

Bookseller Bill said...

When I went to Maine last weekend, I noticed a marked difference between the Maine toll collectors (who were quite friendly) and those in NH/MA (who were not).