Monday, January 03, 2011

Fight, Fight!

I just saw an elderly woman throw a grocery cart, remove another person's items from the conveyor belt, and throw quite an entertaining temper tantrum because there was a foreigner in front of her in the line. And she wasn't visibly pregnant or infirm.

Because Brazil gives the elderly and the obese and the pregnant and the disabled their own special line. And by golly gee, it was her $@%#! right and no one was going to take that from her, even if the poor girl couldn't understand why she was being yelled at.

I tapped her on the shoulder and tried to explain, quickly, and she opted to leave the store and all her purchases. Rushed out, coitada.

Then the wrinkled old bird had a problem. Because now she wasn't doing the screaming, an ENTIRE STORE FULL OF PEOPLE thought she was the wicked witch incarnate. And they were throwing her some seriously evil looks...which made Ms. Wrinkles get REALLY defensive. Because maybe throwing a cart around in a crowded store is NOT socially acceptable, even here???

So since I've butted my nose in, I get to hear about how the lady was playing dumb, obviously, because "I told her in Italian and English...people shouldn't travel on one language alone."

Huh. I don't know about you, but if you've lived any time in a foreign country, sometimes people's opinions of their grasp of your language are a lot higher than they ought to be. And in any case, I think our foreigner was French.

Sorry about those cranky Brazilian grannies. Someone should slap them. Wish it could be me!

4 comments:

Enchanted Naturalist said...

C'mon, Jenna. Don't you know granny was in a hurry? She had places to go and people to see!

-Lucho

Catherine Denton said...

Good thing you helped the poor confused girl out! I think I would've run when the shopping cart got thrown.

--jenna said...

Probably more like a Botox appointment to get to!

I was impressed the girl stood up for herself for so long against a woman who appeared to be a raving lunatic. And no one else seemed to care!

anne said...

one is amazed how folks the world over (seemingly the world over) are in such a gosh darn hurry and so set on getting THEIR rights regardless of the rights or needs of the society as a whole/common courtesy.And so, when the olympics come to brasil.....hm.... (no worse than when they've come other places, but I just wonder about all them pesky foreigners in their country and their single languages...)