Being Too Nice and Other Hate Crimes

The other day (OK, really, this took place about 5 months ago but to me that *is* the other day because it is "any day in the vague past" but I gather I am alone in this belief) I was pushing my kids in their jogging stroller. It's red - really, really, red - which in my paranoid-masked-as-pragmatic way I told myself was good because it was more visible. And we walk in a fairly rural area, and during the nice weather months, we walk regularly. Which means that my highly visible stroller (or, in New England parlance, "carriage") has become a bit of a fixture around here. Like the other day (a year ago?), when a man asked me,

"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"

And I thought he might just possibly be hitting on me until he smacked himself on the forehead (really) :

"Yeah! You're the lady with the carriage!"

Now I don't care how narcissistic you are, there is no conceivable way to believe you are being hit on when someone identifies you as "The Lady With The Carriage." It is akin to being called "The Lady With The Ample Birthing Hips," a role I also play admirably.

So yes, I am The Lady With The Carriage. And I had stopped said carriage by a little creek that runs by our route so that my kids could engage in their jogging-stroller-ritual of throwing stones into the water, which is, I swear, sometimes the only way of bribing them into going for a ride.

When we were visited by The Drunk Crazy Guy. Only of course I didn't see him at first - there was just a big pickup parked by the creek, with no one in it but a German Shepherd puppy. Not uncommon. So I proceeded to the edge of the turnaround and picked up some stones for my kids to throw and when I turned around, there he was - leaning on his pickup unsteadily, and standing between My Carriage and the road.

"Don't worry." He gestured to the dog. "She don't bite."

It wasn't the dog I was worried about. But I couldn't really put my finger on what about this guy was giving me the HEEBIEST of JEEBIES, aside from the fact that he was drunk and leery and a little dirty and I was standing there with my two beautiful little girls and my typical running attire suddenly seemed skimpy and OK - so it's a GUT INSTINCT but I am a NICE GIRL which meant that I just stood there trying to justify why I didn't like this guy.

He started talking to us, telling us where he lived and what he did and the alcoholic vaoprs wafted around and my daughters admired his puppy who was by now out of the truck and I just stood there, making polite conversation, although I really just wanted to leave.

Then he looked at my younger daugther - my gorgeous big-blue-eyed blonde-haired TODDLER and said, "Can I tell you something?"

And she just looekd at him.

And he said, "Can I just tell you something?

And she looked down.

And he said, holding up his oddly trembling puppy as exhibit A, "She may be beautiful. I mean, she's gorgeous, right? But she's nowhere near as gorgeous as you girls and your mother are."

And for once I was so, so delighted my kids are shy by nature, because then he said, "What's your names?"

And I said, "Wow! Look at the time! Gotta go!"

And I started pushing the stroller, pushing it right past him, but he eyed me head to toe - I mean really, that up-and-down look, and said, "Hey, where do you live?"

Oh god oh god oh god. I walked out onto the road and tried to look calm but my knees were positively knocking and I went the wrong direction intentionally - not to my house - and watched as he then got into his pickup and drove away and I waited until he was long past me and THEN I stopped. And took a breath. And walked home.

And locked all my doors and wished my husband were home and called a friend of mine who lives on the same road as this guy. And she said why yes, she did recognize his truck and he had once offered her teenage daugther a ride (She had declined. Good girl!) and by the way, it is odd but now that you mention it some guy was walking his puppy on the road the other day - it could've been him - and two dogs came out of their own back yard and started to attack the puppy and THE NEXT DAY they found those two dogs DROWNED IN THEIR OWNER'S BACKYARD POOL.

OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD.

OK. maybe just coincidence. I'm not saying they should *arrest* this guy based on my instinctive distrust. But it crystallized a parenting goal for me: I want my own daughters to be RUDE girls. The kind who wouldn't prattle with someone that made them squeamish even if the only thing they had to go on was their own gut instinct. Even if they deep down suspected themselves of being racist or classist or reeling-drunk-ist.

I need to become that girl, myself.