June 30, 2008
What I wanted to say but didn�t�To the guy standing on the other side of the parts counter whose overly audible and unnecessarily frequent sighs of impatience sliced the grease-scented air and caused other more understanding customers to roll their eyes when he graced us with his query as to whether his clutch lever was being shipped from California via The Pony Fucking Express, F you.
It was not a �funny little joke.� You are not a funny person. You�re a jackass who�s incapable of being humorous and I know this because of how you glared at me as though I personally caused your euphoric land of eternal happiness to cease rotation simply by denying you your one true desire � an f�ing clutch lever. As though I personally requested an eighteenth century mode of transportation specifically to piss you off and add a bit more malicious sarcasm to my endless days of pure rainbows and chocolate waterfalls.
Sorry, (Grotesquely Rotund) Sir, had I known that this one piece of motorcycle magnificence would mark your soul�s one true desire, had I known that this life-saving lever would, with one sweeping grand gesture, put your daughter through college and lower your cholesterol with its timely arrival, I would have made haste and utilized our handy new Instant Part Materielizer, saving not only my sanity but also the lives of starving children worldwide. But, alas, you�re going to have to wait for UPS Fucking Ground to do its job in one to six business days just like the rest of us.
Well, that�s what I wanted to say.
But I didn�t.
To the guy standing behind that guy, who confided in me the fact that he was not going to purchase anything that day but wanted to price out luggage racks and saddlebags so he could compare them to the current prices �floating about on the internet,� F you, too.
Yes, Mr. (Cheap Ass SOB) Smith, I�d love to help you roam through three-thousand pages of different saddlebags and pick out exactly what you want so you can go compare prices on the internet and ultimately purchase your accessories from some Chinese-based company so that I have a really good reason as to why the dealership went under due to the fact that we could no longer afford to turn on the damned light. Don�t worry, Sir, the Big Guy will love that one.
And nothing, no nothing, would give me more pleasure than to waste a full hour of my time and commission and possible ride-my-own-damned-motorcycle lunch hour so that you can save ten dollars on the same exact bags which will likely cost you ten dollars in shipping so that you can have them delivered to your door without disturbing your hard-earned ass print on the couch you likely found at Overstock.com.
Thanks for stopping by and, by the way, I genuinely appreciate your assistance in my having to sell the bike and find a new job.
To the guy standing next in line � THANK YOU for taking my expert suggestions to heart and buying an Arai helmet. I predict that the five-hundred dollars you spent will be justified down the road when you suddenly realize you have lived a long, happy life full of teeth and total brain functionality. You rule. I love you. Marry me.
That�s what I wanted to say�
But, again, I didn�t.
To the dark-haired man with the uni-brow and doily on his head who claimed that my unconscious use of the moniker �Dear� was �Entirely out of line and totally too personal� and requested that I �shy away from such offensive remarks,� F you.
Deal with it, ya damned Jew, �cause it really could be worse. I could have greeted you with a punch in the whiskey gut or a slight about your inability to bathe with a modicum of some sort of cleaning agent. I could have called you Bert.
I could have been rude or unwilling to assist you in your quest to find the cheapest helmet possible (but thank God for natural selection at least) to protect your cheap and unsightly head. I could have �forgotten� to mention that you still had your glasses on when you attempted to remove the lid from your melon�Oh wait, I did �forget.� Oopsies.
Yes, Dear, that�s the kind of thing you just have to put up with when you get up off your computer chair, stop surfing for porn while pretending to spread the word of God to those innocent victims you call heathens and actually step out into the big bad world of motorcycles. Expect it. Things aren�t always going to go your way. We�re a more rugged crowd than you�re used to when you head off to the barn/chapel where you sacrifice goats and chickens for soul-cleansing purposes so you�re just going to have to deal with it or go to Don and Roy�s where I�m sure you�ll find a better sales associate who won�t even notice you let alone call you Dear.
(And, yes, I proceeded to call him Dear every ten f�ing minutes after without fail and, believe me, I was not my intention nor my desire � it merely happened because that�s ME. Sorry about that, by the way � the one thing I�ve always tried to be and still get busted for�)
But, for all of this that I wanted to say, I held my tongue. I held my tongue and my breath and my composure because people are just going to be that way. It�s not at all because of the old saying that the customer is always right. It�s just because they�re going to be different. They�re going to have bad days. They�re going to be impatient and they�re going to not even realize it. They�re going to drive me up a freakin� wall and piss me off beyond no comparison and make me want to chew on my own head but I hold my tongue.
Why?
Because the penalty for sniping them away seems to incur certain irrevocable consequences and I just don�t see myself handling the sudden onslaught of a confined space very well. I'm claustrophobic, that�s why.