‘not everything has to be a war with you j. edgar hoover types’

Y’all know I hate peo­ple in gen­er­al but I can put on a good per­for­mance with most of them and it’s fine.

But on the road to­day – at a din­er – I’m pret­ty sure the woman work­ing the counter was one of my arch nemeses.

She asks for Aaron’s name and he says “Aaron”

and she goes, “Is it  E R I N?”

and doesn’t even wait for him to an­swer, she just starts writ­ing it down. 

Which, nei­ther of us re­al­ly care, but when Aaron said, “No, but it’s okay,”

and she looks at him and says, “It does­n’t mat­ter.”

Not jok­ing­ly, not laugh­ing, not in a self-dep­re­cat­ing way. 

Just,

“It does­n’t matter.”
 

Doesn’t tell us how long the wait is. And, turns out we could have got­ten cof­fee from them while we wait­ed but she didn’t of­fer us any. 

And I get that they were slammed and Aaron and I are al­ways ex­treme­ly gra­cious with peo­ple in the ser­vice in­dus­try, but holy cow …
 

So

for­tu­nate­ly we did­n’t have to in­ter­act with her again un­til we cashed out, but when we were done and she asked if she could clear our plates away, she asked me if we need­ed a box for the left­over hash browns. Be­cause they give you like, two rus­set pota­toes’ worth of hash browns.

I po­lite­ly de­clined and was just try­ing to be friend­ly and make small talk and I said, 

“Haha yeah, and we over­heard an­oth­er ta­ble or­der EX­TRA hash browns,” 

and then I laughed. I was just mak­ing a joke.

She goes, “Oh, I sup­port ex­tra hash browns!” in the same tone and de­meanor one would use to make the as­ser­tion that trans women are women or that Black Lives Matter. 

o_O

Not even a whiff of hu­mor in her voice.

So then I got all awk­ward and was like, “Uh­h­h­hh ha­ha­ha oh gosh, I just wouldn’t ever be able to eat that many hash browns!”

and no shit, this woman says to me, “All stom­achs are different.”

ಠ_ಠ

I felt like drop­ping to my low, no non­sense, “sick of your shit” voice and saying, 

“Al­right, lis­ten here, not every god­damn top­ic has to be about you demon­strat­ing your hi­lar­i­ous­ly ir­rel­e­vant so­cial jus­tice val­ues, k? Es­pe­cial­ly since you didn’t give a fuck how my husband’s name was ac­tu­al­ly spelled.”

Which, at the very least, you run the risk of dead nam­ing some­one when you do that, 

but

let’s de­fend ex­tra-hash browns per­son like they’re the most per­se­cut­ed mi­nor­i­ty on earth.

Ha­ha­hah­ha­ha­ha­ha, ah, in­ter­state travel.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2021 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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