A Dented Confidence.

It hurt a little.

...that's not a great place to start. Let's back up.



I was working at Safeway on Saturday. I drove to work so I could go straight from there to a friends house to help him record a song. Now, this van I'm driving doesn't have power steering. My dad has taken it in to get fixed several times, but they kind of shake their heads the way only brown people can, and with a sorry smile, they say "No, we won't fix this." Why not? "It's too difficult." It's too difficult? Usually they charge more, not piteously smile and shake their head. But what can you do? I will just pretend I've actually got the muscle to steer the van. (I think I've actually lost muscle over time. I'll blame this on the fact that I'm now living on my own, and when we run out of food, we'll usually go a week longer than we should before buying groceries. Starvation saves money, after all! Try it sometime!) So all this to say, that when I drive to work, there's only a select few parking spots that I can actually park in. Fortunately, today it's available. So I strain and pull and twist and struggle into the parking spot. I try to make sure no one can see me do this because they will clearly think that I'm having a stroke, or that I'm drunk, all hunched over the steering wheel. I try to keep a composed face, like I'm the coolest mini-van-driving-guy ever, you know?

I go into work, and proceed to hate life a little more every minute until I realized I've reached an unhealthy level of depression, so I take a break. Since I've only been at work for, oh, say..twenty minutes, I decide to make it a short one and call a friend. I sit outside the front of Safeway and chat. I randomly take a look at my car which is about 30 feet away.

"Hey...sorry, I gotta run. Yeah they need me to get back to work...Mhmm. Talk to you later. C ya."

Oh but I'm not going back inside. I've noticed something. On the back window of my car, someone has written something in the dust, and it doesn't seem to say "clean me." I casually walk a few steps closer, only getting close enough to read it. I mean, if it says "Hey Josh, you're a cool guy!" then there's no need to go over there and wipe it off or anything, right? But as I wander over, I finally make out the letters. It reads "ASS HOLE! " clear as freaking day. I stop in my tracks about 6 parking spots away, and look around as casually as I could in such a stressful and traumatic situation. No one seems to have psychically realised that I must be the guy who drives that van, so for now I'm safe.

I realised I needed to get this writing off. However, there is an old lady slowly walking towards my car, and it would be terribly embarrassing should she see me smudging it off the window. She'd pass by and yell "Young Punk! Don't be an asshole!" and then she'd report me to Safeway for being uncool. So I slowly walked behind her as she inched along. To the average passerby, I must have looked totally suspicious: with a pained expression on my face, following an old lady to the edge of the parking lot.

Just my luck, she opens the trunk of the car beside mine. Great. What now? And she totally sees me awkwardly standing 3 feet away from her, my eyes darting back and forth between ASS HOLE! and old lady. ggyyaahh....awkwarrrd.

It's decision time, I thought. I casually leaned up against the window of my car, looking slightly up into the sky, as if resting momentarily before continuing to a more respectable and cleaner vehicle that must be mine further along the row. And with deft skill of a deft, skilled fox, I swiped my elbow across the window, did a 180, and headed back into Safeway. HA! I thought I handled the whole situation pretty well.

I'll never know why someone felt the need to write such profanity and underline it. I think it was due to the power steering issue. I wasn't right in the middle of the parking spot. DEFINITELY not over the yellow line, but impolitely crowding the car next to me. But it's not even worth the effort to try and fix it. I'll tell you what, though...

It hurt a little.

He may not have dented my car, but he dented my confidence for the moment.

Come on! I try here. Sorry you bought too many groceries to fit them in your trunk, and so you had to use the back seat. Sorry you have a car with such massive doors and it made it difficult to get the groceries in without getting your soft new jacket dirty on my van. But no seriously, sorry about your new Jacket: It was ugly before it got dusty, anyways.

After work, I walked out to my car, and realised that after all my deft-skilled-fox-moves, I had missed the writing with my elbow while looking at the sky. As I stood there shaking my head at my poor coverup job, some guy walked by, his eyes darting back and forth between ASS HOLE! and my dejected figure. He laughed. Busted.