I'll try to tell this right. If Mike has any corrections, I'll run them.

Mike was at the store today, waiting in line. In front of her was a woman and a six-year-old girl. Note the way I wrote that last sentence, it's important.

Life proceeds, and as Mike is awaiting her turn, the woman in front of her takes her turn with the cashier. Whereupon—get ready for it—a woman in line at the register to Mike's left, her cart filled to the brim, says something along the lines of, "Oh, Heather! Are you next in that line?" and proceeds to push her cart in front of Mike. Mike is next in line, so this is a matter of squeezing past her and two dividers. There is no mistaking this woman's intentions. Unless she was completely blind—and she wasn't—she was cutting.

Now, remember when I said "In front of her was a woman and a six-year-old girl."? Mike naturally assumed the little girl was with the woman in front of her. Instead, this other woman, a "yuppie mom" as Mike described her (which I say to underline that we're not dealing with a low-rent, mentally challenged Chicagoan—a type we have in abundance in the city—but an assumedly college-educated woman) was using her six-year-old child as a place-holder. Add to this the fact that she has another, younger child with her in the other line.

Mike is absolutely stunned by this woman's effrontery, and being a nice, non-confrontational person unwilling to use her pregnant body as a shield, doesn't do what I probably would have done. It involves me saying: "Whoa whoa whoa! What the hell do you think you're doing?" while standing in front of her cart.

As she pushes past, the woman smiles at Mike and says, "Oh, I'm so sorry." even as she loads the conveyor belt with her goodies. If I recall right, Mike said she glared at her and thought, chillily, "I'm not saying anything because your children are here." See? NICE.

I'm quite sure many of you think I'm out of my mind when I rant about line-cutters, seat-stealers on the El, and the vocal cavedwellers who get their way in this world because they're louder and pushier. Perhaps you're calm souls possessed of Buddha-like serenity, or you live in remote areas where people are polite and courteous. Maybe it's 1896 Kansas where you live. Perhaps you simply assume, from my rants, that I'm a very unhappy person who just needs to open up the flower of his soul and let others in... because then... THEN I'll see that people are basically good.

Yeah. No.

You see, many people are nice, but many others, even the nice ones... if they see an opportunity for gain through a little bad behavior, they'll grab it, and whatever moral device they possess completely shuts down as they do it. If they have a moral device, that is. Seems like most parents are passing up on installing that particular doodad.

What I've been noticing over the past few years, what sets me off, is the plethora of people who have the idea that if they can't get what they want NOW it's always the fault of the people around them, somehow. This permits the notion that if you can perform some ninja trickery to get served first, you deserve preferential treatment. I equate it with the prevailing idea that there's nothing worse than criticism and discipline, because it's just awful to make someone feel bad about being a bastard. Behold the bizarre protection of George W. Bush and Ken Lay ("They tried really hard!"), and the insane idea that Jerry Falwell and his legacy of prejudice and cultural atavism must not be criticized because it'll make his family feel bad.

If I may go overboard, I think it's also a sick and underhanded attempt to play off nice people paranoia (i.e. that disgusting idea that you should let the world's thugs walk all over you because, gasp, they might have a gun). Yeah, it's true... but not always. Safety by constant deference means living in fear.

The tricksters know that we know they don't have guns, but they also know that if we're clean, shaven, and dressed neatly; lack big muscles, tattoos, or dagger-shaped lumps beneath our clothing; and pretty much don't look like psycho carnies... it's safe to fuck with us. The most common technique is to make one's boorishness look like a simple accident, playing off the politesse of others and making them complicit in their own screwing. "Oopsy-poopsy! Ha ha! Didn't mean to speed down to the space and park just before you pulled in!"

The tip off to whether it's an accident or not is this: Do they apologize and then back off, or do they simply apologize and stay in place? Not in this culture. If you can get what you want, you obviously deserve it.

Anyway, to the woman who messed with my wife? I wish you crotch rot. You're a shrew and I hope your kids never interact with mine, because I'm giving them hapkido lessons and a scary-ass level of moral superiority.

Mike adds: I was so floored by how rude it was that I just stared at her gobsmacked until eventually my rage turned into the look of death. I didn't actually say anything.