Southern girl plowing her way through life making the rules up as she goes. Warning: likes to bake, curse, quote movies/literature, is tattooed, married to The Man and mother of two girls. We bring new meaning to the "griswald way of life". Come along for the ride!



Saturday, November 18, 2006

Speak English?

Updated from last Thursday: I needed pics to emphasis!

Today I actually left work early to go to a doctor's appointment. Yeah, new tummy pills, woohoo! Maybe these will actually work. Of course, my new doctor is in an area of town that I've never driven. So I get lost. Not a little lost but alot lost.

My insurance people were so kind and sent me the doctor's phone number and address on a handy, "Don't forget your appointment Sweetie" letter. So I did the whole gooooogle maps thing and off I went. IN PLENTY OF TIME! So there I am lost. Can't find this place. The address is a yet-to-be-completed condo highrise and I get turned around. Soooo, I am on the cell, calling the office to be told by Ms. Prissy (why do they put the snotty people on the phone first?) that they are not at that location, they upgraded to a nice new building with underground parking, two miles away.

So I make a nifty right onto the next street (10 minutes till We-had-to-reschedule-your-appointment-b/c-you-were-late time)and off I go. I see my street coming up, so I turn on my blinker as nothing was coming and started to whip into the street. Out of nowhere, I hear brakes lock up and a horn go off immediately behind my left ear. Now, if you're driving on a two way street and you make a left turn, do you check over YOUR left shoulder? NO! Complete idiot driver in one of the lunchbox thingys (have no clue what they are but they look like my kids lunchbox on wheels) then skids next to me.
So I hit my brakes and veer towards the side of the street, narrowly missing the dang fire hydrant. This guy keeps going up on onto the sidewalk and then stops two feet from a building.

The people in the nearby bus stop shelter are screaming at him and me (I did nothing wrong here people)! So I jump out and see this man with his head on the steering wheel. Now, we did not hit each other and we did not hit anything else. So I run up and knock on his window, thinking he had a heart attack, hope, idiot was breathing hard and about to pass out. Then starts yelling at me in a foreign language! (Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people who speak other languages, personally I'm jealous cause I think I'd be much cooler if I did. Plus my husband's family is study German stock that comes full German speaking aunts at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but they speak English too.........)
HELLO! Speak English! We live in America, English is our language. Don't curse me out in a foreign language, take the time to put it in English so I know how and what curses to reply with (Lord forgive me). A cop joins the party and traffic starts to back up. Cop turns to me and goes, "Did you hit the foreign guy?" Dude, the foreign guy was on my left when I was in the far lane making a left hand turn, hello......two way street.

Cop proceeds to nod, then a few bystanders (gossip must have been slow, people were getting out of their cars at this point to join the fun and comments on idiot, who was STILL yelling at me from inside his lunchbox in a foreign language!) Finally someone starts to talk to the idiot in his native tongue, and the translator tells me and cop (who was writing something on paper at this point, YIPES) that idiot thinks I should be taken off the road b/c women can't drive.

OH MY MERCY, I showed my butt. My mother would be so proud of me, I called that man everything but a foreigner and then some (Lord, please stop reading here). I even threw his momma in there at some point. When the cop finally got me to shut up, I was so red and my heart was racing. Cop looks over cars and sends me on my way. Idiot was waving his arms around inside the lunchbox and cop couldn't understand him a bit, so cop left. (Pic to left is what I imagine I looked like at this point)

Needless to say, my car is fine, I'm fine. The idiot in the lunchbox that DOES NOT SPEAK ONE WORD OF ENGLISH but has a legal driver's license is still roaming the streets. By the time I get to the doctor's, I'm so freaking mad that I was barely able to park in the tiny underground parking garage that is the ONLY space to park in their NEW building and make my way upstairs. 20 minutes late and the snotty chick took one look at my red face and asked for my id and told me to sit, they'd send me back in a sec. YES!

Finally, something went my way. Until I left the parking garage, where an older lady in broken Spanish informed me that I couldn't leave the garage without paying the parking fee of $8. Here we go again.