There are a whole lot of people out there who need a good bitch slapping. Corrupt politicians, bigots, blonde heiresses, and a president or two could all use a hard one upside the head. These are the obvious recipients. When we see them our hand kind of tingles, but there is limited access to these folks, so instead we just cringe when we see them and rely on Jon Stewart and Bill Mahr to bash them regularly on cable tv.
Most people in my day-to-day life are lovely. I am pleased to be surrounded by a good group of friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. Sure, every now and again I have to run like hell to the bookstore to avoid wanting to physically injure the man and child I live with, but that’s what happens when three individuals with unique and strong personalities decide to reside in the same house.
There are a select few people in my life right now that I don’t see all that often, but when I do see them, piss me off to no end. These are the people who I’m forced to deal with from time to time, and have to be polite to for the sake of making the occasional time I spend with them less of a hell, and no, they aren’t all relatives or in-laws.
One of the people whose head I’d like to go upside is a woman who attends the same class I do on Tuesday night. For the past few months I’ve been taking a Jewish studies course. Most of the people in the class are great. They are wonderful, thinking people with easy-going personalities who are always willing to make small talk and greet you with a smile, then there’s this bitch. Orthodox Jews who observe the Sabbath, and adhere to the laws of Jewish living are called frum. Sometimes, the women, who often dress modestly covering their hair, are crudely referred to, by less observant Jews, as frummies. I don’t know if the chick that annoys the hell out of me in my haven of Jewish study and thinking is going for the award of “Frummy of the Year,” but she’s pissing me off in the process.
Usually, I approach people who try way too hard to fit in with pity. I mean, how pathetic is your life when you have to go out of your way to be something in order to get acceptance. If you were meant to fit in with a group or be a certain way, it would just come organically and with little effort. This woman has crossed over from pity case to annoying, and the very tone of her voice makes me want to slap her a good one.
She was semi-polite to me until the night I walked into class wearing slacks. She kind of gave me a pissy look and went out of her way, in a very clownish and animated gesture, to hug another (more observant) Jewish woman who walked in the room behind me. I realize I may not be the fabulous fashionista I would like to be, and I don’t dislike this woman, because she doesn’t like my pants, I could give a shit less about her critique of my personal style. What chews my cheese is that she was judging me, and who the fuck is she to judge me!
It’s bad enough that I have to watch her kiss ass to every rabbi who comes in to teach, or that I have to stand in line to ask a relevant question about the lesson, because she wants the rabbi to know that she is inviting his wife over for coffee, to be judged by a woman who pairs Nikes with a long jean skirt, frumpy sweater, and a poly-cotton blended beret is just too much.
All of my experiences with members of the Orthodox Jewish community have been wonderful, so I can’t hold one bad seed against them, and I wouldn’t encourage anyone else to either. Unfortunately, assholes reside in every group and every circumstance.
There are those waitresses with chips on their shoulders who believe that what they do isn’t merely food service, but a personal favor to you - the lazy woman who didn’t want to cook for her family. There are the people in the accounting and IT departments who assume you are stupid and have to explain some lame ass process to you, even though you don’t care, because in the end, it’s their job, not yours. And, we must not forget those friends you don’t see very often who send you the conservative spam email completely forgetting that you are against George Bush’s war for oil and worked on the Kerry campaign.
Yes, for every ten people you meet in life on a day-to-day basis at least one needs a good, hard bitch slap. The kind of slap that’s done with feeling like every fiber of your being draws your hand to their face with one smooth gliding motion, and releases a tension the size of a good Mt. Saint Helen’s blast. Unfortunately, what you see as a favor to society, most local authorities see as assault and battery, so you just have to look at those sorry bastards and daydream about slapping them. After all, dreaming is free.
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