I'm a bad person

Know what I’m not going to miss? Watching Charlie Weis eat his boogers on national TV every weekend of October through November. Good riddance. I stuck by that bastard for way too long. Now that I’m finally jumping his sunken ship, it feels good to be able to say some of the things I’ve held back for so long. I wanted to see you succeed, Charlie. So badly. You’re an ornery guy from New Jersey, you went to ND, and never played a down of college football there. It had all the makings of an incredible story. Just one problem: You’re not a head coach.

All this Charlie Weis talk reminds me:

Last week I took my dog out for a walk. She’s a 12 lb dachshund. In front of my building there was a minivan double parked and two vehicles headed in opposite directions. A big fat man in his mid to late 50’s driving a Lincoln Continental yielded to the vehicle traveling in the opposite direction. Once the other car had passed, he continued to sit there, presumably perspiring and breathing heavily from the exertion of applying pressure to the brake. I assumed he was yielding to me and Ruby as well, like a nice fat man. As we stepped briskly into the street and began to cross, he raised his hands in the air, an angry gesture that was likely accompanied by a few choice expletives that I couldn’t hear because he hadn’t yet rolled the window down. When I raised my hands, mocking him for his failure to either proceed in a timely fashion or for his lack of patience, he quickly rolled his window down.

“Oh! Big man!!! And his little fuckin’ dog!!!” he screamed.

I stopped beside his car, looked down at my little fuckin’ dog and smiled at her as she gazed back at me in wonder.

“Big man! Big man and his little fuckin’ dog!!! You pussy. Why don’t you get a bigger dog, you pussy!”

Completely fed up, I stooped to his level. Not something I’m proud of, especially because fat old men driving Lincolns sometimes have ties to organized crime. “What are you? 300, 400 lbs? How long did it take you to get into that car and get your seatbelt on? 15, 20 minutes? Seriously? How long? You fat fuck. Where are you going anyway? To have a heart attack?”

At this point his volume reached new heights. “Look at that little dog. I’ll kick that little dog. You fucking pussy!”

My volume increased evermore, “Are you kidding me? You couldn’t kick this dog if I put her on a tee, you fat fuck. Fat guys like you don’t kick things; you walk around taking baby steps and breathing heavily.”

From the park behind me a man chimed in, “Come on guys! Calm down! Sir, just drive. Just drive!”

I turned to look. It was a man and his wife walking their two dogs in the park. By the time I turned my head back around the object of my ire was driving away. I was both furious and embarrassed. In a huff, I walked my dog into the park, deliberately by the couple. The wife wouldn’t look at me. She was probably afraid of and disgusted with me. I earnestly offered to the man, “I’m really sorry about that. I’m not proud of myself.”

He turned to me and said, “That’s ok. It happens to the best of us. I just didn’t want to see it escalate.”

“Regardless, I’m sorry about that. No one should have to see that.”