“I’m doing alright, but I’m a little bitchy.”

Those were the words I heard uttered by the woman behind the counter at my local mini-mart this morning.  I fuel up at this same mini-mart at least once a week, and I do this not for the charming woman behind the counter, but instead because my next door neighbor happens to own it, is a good man, and I like to support him when I can.

The 300lb, heavily-tattooed, bleach-blonde woman behind the counter just happens to be the icing on the cake for me, because I love angry people, and I love trying to “turn them.”  If I work with a perpetual rain cloud, I take great pride at being the guy who chips away their hard shell of rage and finds the sweet candy middle.  In fact, I sort of make it a mission at times.  At a previous company I worked for, the woman in accounts payable was a real pitbull, and everyone called her things that you shouldn’t call women unless they just cut you off in traffic, and you haven’t had caffeine yet, and you didn’t get much sleep because your 4-year-old has a cold, and you… WHY DON’T YOU TRY USING A SIGNAL, YOU STUPID…

Wait… where was I?

Oh right.  So this woman was not well-liked in the office, but each day I’d chip away at her.  “Hello, Linda.  You look nice today.”  “Well good morning, Linda!  I see you have your attack face on.  Haha… go get em’!”  “Linda, I actually don’t think she can breathe.  You’d better get off of her.”  It took months, but eventually I wore her down to the point where she dropped her tough exterior and wound up being nice to me and only me.  She even started to let me in on her secrets like, “Now watch as I really turn on the rage to Carl.  His account hasn’t paid in 6 weeks, and he’ll wilt like a flower.”  I got some kind of strange pleasure out of it, as I’d watch this woman then pounce on poor Carl like some kind of rabies-infested tree squirrel.

So the woman at the mini-mart is no exception.  She is angry, bitter, loud, crass, and I desperately want her to accept me.  So I’ve spent the last 6 months working on her each time I fill up for my daily commute to work, and I’ve made serious progress.  So much so that after she looked at the stunned patron across the counter, who had no idea that casually asking, “How are you doing today?” would warrant a response such as, “I’m doing alright, but I’m a little bitchy,” she then turned and winked at me.

“Why are you a little bitchy, Carol?” I asked in as monotone a way as possible.  With someone like this, you never want to display any signs of fear.

“Well, I was supposed to leave for Hawaii tomorrow, but then my husband went and got a stupid job,” she replied with a snort as she bit the head off of a bottle of beer and drank the contents.  Now don’t be alarmed that she was drinking beer at 8:00am in the morning, as I should mention that it was probably only her 7^th or 8^th, and nothing terribly out of control.

“That son of a bitch,” I responded.

She laughed and said, “I know!  He’s been laid off for 18 years, and gets a job two weeks before we’re supposed to leave for Hawaii.  Probably for the best though, since they drug test at his new job, so we wouldn’t have been able to have a good time anyway.”

I probably wouldn’t have been able to hide my reaction to the fact that her husband had been laid off for the past 18 years, had it not been for the fact that I could not stop my stupid brain from immediately conjuring up images of this woman in a bikini on a beach in Hawaii.  To give you an idea of what this would look like; picture 70s all-pro Linebacker, Dick Butkus, in his prime, in a bikini, lounging on a beach, only with slightly more facial hair.

So there lies the double-edged sword of trying to be a friend to Oscar the Grouch:  Sometimes you get to live vicariously through them as they pounce on helpless prey…

Other times you just get to picture Dick Butkus in a bikini.