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2004-12-31 @ 12:31 a.m.
why rent videos when you can just watch the ass whooping in the parking lot?


I finally got my ass out of bed about noon today. The Jaws of Life were called in, since it appeared that I was hopelessly trapped in a sleep induced wreck called depression. Granted I had been awake until 3:30 a.m. the night before. Eating cookies and drinking warm Sprite at my art class had introduced sugar into my system and thats always a dicey proposition. Also, I had woken up at 8:20 and saw that it was once again gray and dismal out and wondered WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY SHOULD I GET UP??

fucking Canadian clouds. You have so many good things in Canada...mooses, hockey, beer, comedic talents like Mike Meyers, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey. And all we get are your stupid fucking cold fronts and clouds for fours months a year. Why couldn't you just send me Mike Meyers for a couple of hours? Maybe he could do a little �Austin Powers� for me. Toss me a few jokes about shagging. Share his secrets of mojo supremacy. Just something besides this smothering mass of gray clouds.

But I finally got up and fried some eggs and decided to get my laundry done since it wasn�t doing anything hazardous out. I had also finished a resume for my mom�s friend, so I decided to combine to two and do my laundry on the east side of town and meet her at the laundromat with the resume. That�s right witty...multitask! You have to if you don�t get your lazy ass out of bed until noon. So I asked her to be there at 1:30.

Ha! Oh well. I guess I didn�t say that in a very commanding voice, because she never showed up until 2:20 when I was nearly done with everything. But in the meantime, I got to examine the wondrous microcosm that is...

...The Laundromat Parking Lot....(sigh)

As you well know, if you read me with any regularity, I have this particular soft spot in my heart for people parking lots. Oh yeah! I believe that parking lots bring out the best in humanity. Absolutely. Everyone is so polite and considerate out there...�Are you backing out? Oh, let me get out of the way, so you won�t run over me and cause expensive repair work.� �You want my parking space? No, I really don�t mind parking 3.6 miles away from the mall. I can see that you have that iron lung there.�

So I sat out in my car for an hour. It wasn�t too cold out today, and I hate the clientele of laundromats anyways. Why? Because I usually always either get hit on by a guy (not sure why, but its literally the only place I ever get hit on. Must be the humidity. It makes men delirious. They think I�m Jessica Simpson) or annoyed by some old lady who wants to tell me their life story. This particular laundromat is combined with a Caesar�s Pizza place, so there was a constant stream of people coming to get pizzas. It�s in a lower middle class part of town. Think �The Deer Hunter� movie personified.

I was parked directly in front of a huge pile of garbage in front of the restaurant part. How totally lovely. What an enchanting ambiance. I was actually twisted around watching for my mom�s friend �M�, the lady who makes sandwiches for squirrels. She just lost her job after 29 years. One day they just fired her on the spot. She ran the whole one person office by herself for 29 years. Worked 6 day weeks. No vacations. She got screwed. So I cut her some slack for being an hour late.

People were just totally driving crazy though. Usually I�m just looking for a parking space or cursing someone for walking behind me, but sitting there watching everyone act like assholes for an hour in a parking lot was totally fascinating. One huge smiley black guy, who looked like Fat Albert, seemed really friendly and nice when he got out of the car with his girlfriend, but then he went totally postal when several cars were backing out at the same time in the small lot and he was flipping people off and screaming and looking like he was on the verge of flooring it and taking out several people so he could get home and eat his Meat Lover�s Supreme.

When I went in to put the clothes into the dryer, I used their restroom. Suddenly there was a loud �BAM, BAM, BAM� on the door. This always annoys me for some reason. Not the knocking, but when somebody does it urgently like that. So I said, �One moment, please.� And then BAM, BAM, BAM! again.

�One moment please!!� (asshole)

But then when I come out there was nobody there. That�s strange. So I went back to my car and since the lot was relatively empty for the first time, I decided to move my car down in front of the laundromat and back in, so that I could see �M� drive in the driveway. And suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see this furious blur of movement and I was like WTF? A black guy and a white guy were beating the shit out of each other right next to my car. Fuck! I slid down in my seat and locked my car door, but it really didn�t matter. They were beating each other with their fists and falling down and rolling around and getting up. And this continued all the way across the parking lot. And unlike in the movies, where fighting always looks somewhat heroic, they looked rather foolish. Swinging and largely missing. Falling down alot. Trying to kick the other guy�s leg out from under them. When they got out near the street, the one guy�s arm got tangled up in the Caesar�s Pizza�s stand up sign, so they both fell over that into the street and all the traffic had to screech to a stop including a bus.

And I was sitting there thinking, hmm, well now would be a good time to use that really cool cell phone that your company gave you, witty. You know, to call 911. But then I started weighing things out. Was this really worth calling 911 over? I guess. I have never attended a street brawl before. I didn�t really know the rules. Unfortunately though, my cell phone was in the trunk of the car. I had locked my purse in the trunk because I had just cashed a Christmas check from my friend in California and I didn�t want to carry the cash into the laundromat, because, well, this particular laundromat, was kinda skeevy. And now its definitely going on my "Skeevy with the Chance of VIOLENCE" list.

Oh, and I forgot, this white trash chick was out in the middle of it screaming for them to stop. She left her baby in the laundromat and was screaming �Fuck. Fuck You. Fuck� in the middle of the parking lot. I couldn't really tell which side she was rooting for initially, but come to find out, she was with the black guy.

Finally, after stopping traffic and rolling around out in the middle of the street like a couple of jackasses, the white guy abruptly jumped off the black guy and jumped into a waiting getaway car and sped off. The white girl tried to hug the black guy but he pushed her away. She then started yelling at him. But he was just telling her to get off. He was wearing those kind of huge oversized gangsta pants that only stay up due to mojo gravity. Well, the gravity force field had been interrupted because those pants were now around the guy�s knees and he was wearing white boxer shorts with big pink and red hearts. Man, what a total badass!

A cop finally kind of leisurely rolled up about 10 minutes later. And what�s criminal about that is that it occurred in a village that is only 3 blocks long and the police department is only one block away. What�sa matter, Joe Friday? Interrupt Thursday edition of �All My Children�? The black guy was still rubbing blood off his nose and the cop was yawning as he was talking to the guy. The white chick had gone back inside the laundromat and �M� had finally arrived.

�M� knows everyone in town and she got the scoop on what happened. Evidently the black guy had asked a white woman if she could move a laundry basket, because it was out in the middle of the floor. And she got offended because, gosh, a black man had politely asked her to move her stupid ass basket which was blocking an aisle. So she called her boyfriend on her cell phone and he had immediately come looking for the guy. And that was the loud BAM, BAM, BAM on the bathroom door....the boyfriend looking for the black guy. Sheesh, I�m glad he didn�t have a gun or anything. I�ve already got phobias about public restrooms. I could just see someone shooting out the bathroom door, permanently cementing my lifelong fear of peeing in public again.

After the ass-whooping I headed over to the �Y�. I had good intentions today. I had talked to �A� about maybe using their treadmills since I miss walking so much in the winter. So I headed up to the equipment room for the first time and let me tell you. I walked in there and was totally...

INTIMIDATED



There were about 60 people in there and they all looked like models in a Bally�s Health Spa commercial. Rippling Abs. Finely chiseled butt cheeks. Botoxed eye brows. Plus they all had nice exercise clothes. I had arrived with my black turtleneck and black jeans. How totally gauche. I may be the queen of chic at my art class, but here I would have merely the butt of whispered jokes. So I went back downstairs and got into my bathing suit and headed out to the whirlpool, since my back is killing me once again. I sat and watched the parents play with their kids in the kiddie pool. One mom was holding out her arms and having her three year old daughter jump from the edge of the pool. I watched the total love in the mom�s face. And I knew the little girl trusted her mother, since she jumped into her arms about 5 or 6 times. And then I wondered what that would be like. Trusting someone. Having someone waiting for you...with open arms. Having someone love you.
Guess like blue skies, I'll have to wait for those too.

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Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty

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