Unleashed Fury

[Mercy the Puppy demonstrating how to wear a leash.]

A few weeks ago, while closing up shop at the museum, I heard a commotion at the back door. When I stepped over to have a look, I took note of an enraged man standing on the back step spittle-yelling at one of my coworkers because another one of my coworkers had told him that the park behind the museum requires all dogs be leashed. Among other things, he was hollering that his dog could only take a shit off-leash. Yes, he really said that. 

Some of you might recall that about a year ago, a woman with two off-leash German shepherds was equally infuriated when I told her about the leash law. She totally went off on me. This triggered the crap out of me and, while I managed to not tell her to fuck off, I did not take it well. Consequently, she and her alleged boyfriend did their best to get me fired. Among other things, they falsely claimed that I had physically accosted the woman. 

Then, last week, on the eve of my two-year anniversary at this little job I love so much, it happened again. I went outside to retrieve the sandwich board welcome sign and ran into a woman with an off-leash dog. I explained to her that she needed to leash the dog. She started in on how she always has the dog off leash in the park. I repeated that she needed to leash the dog or I would call 911. Seeming not to believe me, she carried on, letting her dog run all over the place. Not wanting a repeat of the German Shepherdess situation, I went ahead and called 911. And as I waited for the cops, she continued to run her mouth while I tried not to run mine. 

It might seem to be a waste of resources to call the cops. On the other hand, I was beyond over the way these people perpetually shit on my colleagues and me. I know if I tangle with them, if I let myself get hooked and go off, I am likely going to lose this gig that has provided me with so much post-lockdown mental healing. So the cops showed up and the dog got leashed. This, of course, was not the end of it. Because this woman, like the German Shepherdess before her, outraged that a law applied to her, filed a complaint with my top supervisors. 

I have not seen the complaint. I do not know if there will be repercussions. Or, I should say, further repercussions. But believe me, I am already so paying and paying and paying for having interacted with her in the first place.

Let’s call her Ivanka Hilton, for she surely did look like the lovechild of Ivanka Trump and Paris Hilton. Like the other off-leash people who have flipped out on me and my coworkers, Ivanka Hilton’s dog is of the expensive designer variety. Also like the others—white. And, I sense, they are all monied, too, as they seem to actually live downtown which, apparently, runs about $2700 on average per person. 

In turn, they remind me of the Tesla drivers who regularly cut me off in traffic. (It used to be Lexus drivers—did Lexus drivers switch to Tesla?) Not all Tesla drivers are maniacs, but when it comes to being cut off, overwhelmingly the drivers doing this seem to favor Elon’s vehicles. Even before the election and before the wankfest that is Trump and Musk, I found these aggressive Tesla drivers maddening. Now that the bromance between the Dark Triad Boys is all over the news, there’s an added layer of rage burning up inside of me. 

So I’ve spent the past several days really examining entitlement. Entitlement is probably my all-time greatest pet peeve. For years I had a well known reputation for walking into the Hyde Park Post Office, asking, in a very innocent tone, “Pardon me, who is driving the [FILL IN THE BLANK MAKE AND MODEL]?” When someone volunteered the vehicle in question was theirs, I would then loudly announce, “You’re illegally parked in a handicapped spot. You need to move it now.” After doing that for a decade or so, I finally made myself dig deep. Why did this particular parking practice make me so furious? Pretty simple: I hate it when people take what isn’t theirs and, worse, when they do this at the expense of others, and worse still, when those others are, say, disabled.

Last Saturday I was trying to navigate from a client meeting in South Austin back to the ranch, which should have taken a half-hour. Instead it took ninety minutes and a very circuitous route because the highway was entirely shut down. Why? Because a woman was on an upper deck threatening to jump. This snarl began just before 11 am and lasted until 5 pm. Last I heard the woman was rescued. But her choices had a radiating effect on literally many thousands of people whose days were entirely disrupted, including the father of the groom at the wedding I later performed, who was quite late for the ceremony. 

Perhaps it is in poor taste to use this event so soon to offer an analogy, but it occurs to me that anytime I am faced with entitled people, it is pretty much 100% guaranteed that my mind is going to teeter on the edge, and possibly even jump directly into a mess of hyper focused overthinking, laser focused on my anger. It is also absolutely guaranteed that if I do take the leap, go to the place where I feel rage at how unfair it all is, that my mind is going to have a major traffic jam. My normal thoughts, the ones that help me function, plan, see and enjoy beauty—these all get caught in an unmoving gridlock. The longer I dwell, the more I am robbed of joy. I waste endless time that I can never get back defending myself in my mind, arguing with the entitled villain in my story, souring my outlook on everything and everyone else I encounter for however many days it takes for the poison of the interaction to slowly seep from my system. 

There were a few positive takeaways from all this negative overthinking. Were I to be fired, this would be really sad, but it would not take me down. Another reason to celebrate being an old crone, another chance to reflect on how far I’ve come in my life, and the resilience that runs deep inside of me. 

Another plus, if an uncomfortable one, is the unwanted reminder that I still have so much work to do on myself. In general, but especially in these heated political times, if I don’t figure out how to stop getting hooked by entitled people, it’s going to be the death of me. And to stop getting hooked, I have got to find a way of accepting that no words or actions on my part—polite or otherwise—will ever convince an entitled person to correct their selfish course. This has not happened once in my sixty years and I doubt it will ever happen, even if I live another sixty years. 

A final plus, which does not at all feel like a plus, is that the older I get, the more swiftly I face off with Unpleasant Truths. So, yes, in the traffic jam of my mind, I also encountered more than a few wincing memories of times that I behaved in the manner of an entitled asshole. This montage is always served up with a heaping side dish of humility as I force myself to recognize unwanted commonalities shared with people I can’t stand.

My memory, a bizarre repository packed with reference points squirreled up over many years, is pretty good at pulling up relevant helpful information. Toward that end, I was visited by two long lost snippets, each of which I found helpful in different ways. There was the advice—I believe from Pema Chödrön—that if you want to walk around the world and not hurt your feet, you can either cover the entire earth in leather or you can put on a pair of shoes. 

And—far more fun— I suddenly recalled a publicity stunt pulled off by the folks at The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema thirteen years ago. Upon receiving a long, enraged voicemail from a patron who had been kicked out of a movie for using her cellphone, they turned the message into a little video that went viral, and which they used to regularly broadcast in their theaters before movie previews. This woman—so very much like Ivanka Hilton, and the guy who swears his dog can’t shit off leash, and the other off-leash guy who flipped me off, and the German Shepherdess lying and claiming that I assaulted her— used this expression: “The Magnited States of America…”

MAG-nited? Sounds like MAGA-nited, right? And yet this message was made five years before Trumpy Boy began his MAGA riot. Was the angry caller prescient? Seems like she might have been. Seems to me that already, not even a month after elections and more than a month to go before inauguration, there’s a growing number of folks, clearly emboldened by How Things Are These Days, who truly do not give a shit about anyone but themselves and who, upon being informed they are violating a rule or law designed to take into consideration what Barbara Jordan loved to call The Common Good, don’t give a flying fuck. If it doesn’t serve them, then they consider it non-applicable. 

On the bright side, I have been officially relieved of informing the scofflaws of their transgressions. On the dark side, this means they can continue to play their entitlement games without repercussions. I need to figure out how to let this roll off of me, to focus on covering my own feet and not waste time futilely trying to cover the earth, admittedly an impossible task. I surely do have my work cut out for me but I’m determined to succeed, as this is the only hope I have to try to survive the next four years with my sanity at least somewhat intact. 

And y’all? Are you running into increasingly emboldened and aggressive folks? How are you coping? 

NOTES:

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