Friday, October 31, 2008

Hey! Don't speak for me, lady.

Today I had to take my car in to the dealership for an oil change and tire rotation. It's a new car, so I figure I will take it there for a while. Anyway, the waiting area consists of modern, leather furniture with some tables and magazines and a television. It's not a really quiet area. I could hear an old-fashioned printer for a while in the background and the occasional announcement over the loud speaker.

So, there I am enjoying the peace and reading my book, when a man and his wife enter the waiting area. At this point, there were some other people sitting around and the TV was off. The woman sits and starts to read. Her husband picks up the remote and turns on the TV. He settles on Fox News and Sarah Palin is giving a speech. Immediately, another woman asks in a very loud voice if he would turn it down. She was very rude about it. The man complied and said, "I'm hard of hearing." Now, he was older and the woman asking him to turn it down was probably in her 50s. I will admit I was enjoying the quiet, but I thought it just meant I would concentrate a little more on my book to block out the TV. Well, about two minutes later, the woman got up and went over to the man watching TV and said,"Look, there are four people sitting around and reading, do you need to watch the TV?" I couldn't believe how she was? I could tell he was getting annoyed with her. Something happened and next thing I knew I was saying, "It's not bothering me." The woman stopped what she was saying, looked at me, and sat down. I felt that rush of adrenalin you get when you confront someone. It was so great. I couldn't look at her after that. But, I thought she had no right to treat this man that way. I wonder if he had been watching something other than Sarah Palin would she have been so vocal?

The point is the woman was so arrogant to assume what she wanted is what the rest of us wanted. I think if she had been polite and told the man what she felt, it wouldn't have made me say something to her. How dare her think she knows what I want? After all, the TV was there and it was a waiting room. Get over it and stop trying to control everything, lady. Life is this way. We enter a room and get comfortable. Someone comes along and makes a change. We have to adapt. We can be grumpy and try to throw our weight around and annoy the room, or we can be polite and try to make change in a grown up fashion. In the end she looked like a jerk when she could have been so much nicer about it.

2 comments:

Kristina said...

I agree! And you so did the right thing!

Katrin said...

Well done, I love that rush too. But that would've been just one of those occasion when I blush to a very dark red. :(