Hissy Fit!

I like to think of myself as the NICEST WOMAN ALIVE. And although I never brag about myself and my accomplishments, I only know that all my friends thing I'm an even-keel, true-blue, kind, loving, caring, gentle, sweetheart of the first order.

I'd like to lay claim and say I was born this way, but actually, my tender traits are the direct result of deciding that I wanted to be as different as night and day from my Mother. And although for the most part I've taught myself to turn the kindly cheek wherever possible, every once in a while the veneer cracks and the dark, seething underbelly of my Hell-spawn character oozes through.

This morning, for instance. I like to get up, head out early and take care of chores because I don't like crowds and traffic and rushing around. This is doubly-so when the errands involve Walmart or Ross or the mall. I just don't want to stand in line for 30 minutes to buy a roll of toilet paper while 13,000 screaming children fly wetly through the aisles trying their best to knock my feet out from under me. I've never actually fallen, mind you, but I can just imagine what it would be like: Some electric current would sizzle and snap, triggering their pack mentality into a feeding frenzy and I'd be crushed and bitten and mauled and rendered limb from limb by Walmart Shopper Children.

I, who love the smell of roses and lilacs would find the last smell to enter my nostrils before death to be the pungent odor of lardy unwashed Mexican kids and watermelon bubble-gum.

Olay!

But not today. Today I made it out of Walmart unscathed completely and was able to go to Ross just as it opened. I need clothes badly, folks. I'm hanging rags off my back and it's not a pretty sight. I figured I could go in there and hit the severely reduced rack and see what I could find to put together an outfit or two.

Well, when you are a plus-size pudge carrying all your weight between your stomach and your kneecaps, you can't just grab a size 14-16 off the shelf and figure it will fit. You have to TRY STUFF ON. It's boring, it's tiring, it's futile, but it has to be done. Because in my world, NOTHING EVER FITS.

This means pawing through rack after rack, just to glean one item that might work. And doing this over and over again until I have 10 or more items that might work, knowing all the while that after all that hard work, I will be lucky to leave the store with one semi-ill-fitting bargain blouse.

Today, I managed to get almost 13 things that I thought might fit me and not make me look like a Hootchie Mama missing her crack pipe, and headed to the back of the store where the dressing rooms are. But wait! Instead of the surly Russian girls who usually work that counter, my eye (I've only got one) beheld a team of Mexican Construction Dudes on a break. They were behind a rope and hanging from the rope was a sign that said, "Dressing Rooms Closed."

Being the kindly, sweetheart lady whom everyone loves and adores, I thought to myself sweetly, "Oh, they must have an alternative dressing room somewhere. Perhaps the bathrooms or the stock room or the office has been cordoned off for the use of myself and the horde of 57,000 other shoppers heading this way on a Saturday Morn. This is easily fixed. No problem."

But no. On the contrary. After hoofing it all over the store to find a salesperson or any person who appeared to be a store employee, I finally spoke with a woman at check-out. She said, "No. There are no dressing rooms today."

Have you ever heard of such a thing? That's like going to a coffee shop and ordering coffee and being told that there will be no coffee beans today. We're still open, but you can't have any coffee.

And that was when I had my little hissy fit.

It wasn't pretty, it wasn't polite, it did not contain language that was fit for small children and the excessively religious. Phrases such as, "What type of business model...? Which moron in the corporate office...? You might at LEAST...!" were peppered with "This is ridiculous, it sucks, it's asinine, it's a waste of taxpayer dollars, who do you think you people ARE?" and it all ended in me throwing my armload of clothes over a rack and saying, "Then YOU put them away. I'm not going to!" and stomping out.

Later, on the way home, as I was coming down off my adrenalin high, I realized I forgot to say, "Do you people KNOW WHO I AM? Do you know who you are DEALING WITH?" I really wish I had been able to use the phrase, "KISS MY ASS, HONKY BITCHEZ!" and "HEADS WILL ROLL! I'LL HAVE YOUR JOB if it's the LAST THING I DO!"

I know that for the rest of the day until something else comes along to drive this incident out of my head, I will continually think of more Brilliant and Pithy and Attacking things to say that will just SHOW THEM WHOSE BOSS! And then I will laugh when I've exhausted them all because the final threat of force and destruction must always be, "I'm going to tell my MOM on YOU!"

And then you'll be very, very sorry you were ever born.