It’s rare that I eat a meal that doesn’t contain either: A.) Meat, B.) Pasta, or C.) Meat and Pasta, but last night my sister made the girlfriend and I a vegetarian dinner. Before we were scheduled to head over to there, I was trying to describe to the girlfriend what my sister was making for dinner. I described it as “placenta pie,” which was not only inccorect, but would be so non-vegetarian as to border on cannibalistic.

It was polenta pie, and it was really good.

After dinner, we headed out to grab a cone at one of the local beach ice cream shops. With all the choices available, the girlfriend chose a simple chocolate cone. The sister on the other end chose something with so much crap jammed in it that it had a funny name like “harbor sludge” or something. I went the zen route, and had some ginger ice cream…in a cup. No mess, and my kung fu became strong. Weeeeeeeeaaaaaaaawwww (a gong rings in the distance.)

As Hull is very close to the city, it can be a very socially varied environment during the day, but at night it’s even more so. Last night was no exception. As we were on the return trip of our walk (turning around in front of a bar in which a friend of mine was, unbeknownst to me, sitting having a beer) two kids and their late teens walked past us mumbling incoherently. One turned to me and said,

Badger? Hedgehog Japan?

while pointing at the ground in front of the three of us. He said it again, and I started trying to figure out if he was foreign and needed help. Then, he ran three steps forward in the direction we were walking. He began talking even more incoherently, and pointing with much more conviction.

Drugs. Fuck. And it wasn’t your garden variety. This kid was fucked up and unpredictable.

Jon went into full battle mode. While he was mumbling more bullshit, I was trying to calculate whether I would have to move my sister out of the way to punch him in the face hard enough to hopefully put him down. I was also calculating distance to his drugged out friend, and trying to figure out if he’d run, fight, or aid the casualty. At the same time, I’m peripherally judging if they have friends within a 10 second run that might come to aid him. This happens lightning fast, and I become very focused on the task at hand. People have told me that it looks menacing to the point of virtually crazy, which has to help ward off idiots like these two.

The kid must’ve seen a beacon through the fog, because he just pointed again and quizzically said “No?”
I replied, “No.”
He said, “Nothing?”
I replied, “Nothing.”

And they walked off in the other direction. As there were no manly or even junior weights for me to lift to calm down, we ducked into the local arcade to play a little air hockey. It was there that my female escorts proceeded to whoop my ass, locking me out of the final elimination. If they were the US and Canada, then I was Uganda.

So much for mr. toughguy, eh?

As we were walking back, a kid ran up behind us full speed to scare his friends. Kid almost got knocked out just by the fucking remnants of the battle mode of thinking. I heard him at 15 feet, and was ready by 3. Even though I find the mode very useful, I hate it. It winds me up (without actually raising my heart rate, which is odd), and makes me as paranoid as I was when I was a teenager. And I hate that feeling. Waiting for someone or something to attack can really color the day in the wrong way.

Posted in Anger