A bad day.

There are many dangers when walking in a busy street, charity workers for starters. The type who try to make you believe that giving to charity is an obligation, and don’t seem to buy it when you tell them you can’t afford it. You are not a bad person if you don’t buy into every charity that hangs about the streets, there are few things as infuriating in walking the gauntlet of crusty hippy charity workers who act like your best mate. If you are cornered, and they are laying down guilt, don’t believe them, give what and when you can, and always read what you sign.

An umbrella is a strange reason to hate someone, but a lot of people who carry these things need to pay a little more attention. People who use umbrellas are rarely as attentive as the poor sod who has had to shield his eyes all day from the little pointy bits on the end of the spokes. A hood does the same job, it’s more practical and it doesn’t endanger the eyesight of strangers, your hair cut isn’t as important to anyone else as it is to you.

Prams. The people pushing the prams, and the babies in them are not really the problem, it’s the attitude that comes with having a pram that gets me. I am more than aware that I used to be a baby, which is just about the dumbest retort I have ever heard, when I bitched about prams to someone at work the other day they replied ‘you used to be one!’, I half expected the next thing out of their mouth to be ‘that’s just your opinion!’ People with no basic arguing skills tend to spout the obvious.
Not all pram pushers, but most have a sense of achievement and superiority that would embarrass even the most hardcore Smiths fan, and we all know one of those. They assume that your toes are part of the pavement and rarely apologise for rolling over them, they stop in the middle of the pavement to compare babies with some other pram pusher, or to show off their child to someone who is usually exaggerating how interested they are. The blocking of doors is unacceptable, find somewhere else to stand. You may think your child is the most important human being born since you were born, but trust me, it’s not important enough to block the door of subway.
The assumption that everyone wants to coddle your new born is what is commonly referred to as a bad assumption. Some people get mushy for real, they are generally broody women, who either can’t have kids or concentrated on their career and totally forgot to have one, known as the Jennifer Aniston effect. Everyone else doesn’t care that much, and will probably have forgotten the child’s name by the time they get home. Stories about what your baby does to amuse you is boring, it’s all just trivia about a kid in a pram that is preventing me from getting a subway sandwich.

It’s not the babies fault, it’s the parents. Kids don’t really get annoying until they are out of the pram and running around. Which reminds me of a story that I have never been able to decide if I am proud of or not. You decide. In my younger days of bussing tables I was attacked by a child of a young age, between 5 and 8 if I had to try and guess. The parents were your typical ‘Sunday lunch’ types, drinking to forget the tragedy that their life has become, an continuous circle of daytime TV and cheap wine to get drunk enough so that they can have scheduled sex sessions, in the missionary position, no oral, no passion, just going through the motions. The kid was running riot, and despite my warnings of hot food and drinks being a possible danger, the parents let him continue.
I was standing at the bar when this little bastard ran at me with tomato sauce all over his hands and put it all over my work clothes. I didn’t lose my temper, even though his parents laughed it off. I waited for my moment. I had cleaned off and went to watch some TV in the games room while waiting for the table to drink up and fuck off, when my opportunity presented itself, he came rushing into the pool room and started running around screaming, he was running so fast it was only a matter of time before he hurt himself. I plotted his downfall. As he came past me I stuck out my leg and tripped the little bastard. I didn’t plan it so he would fly through the air, face first into a wall. That was a bonus. He got up, no blood, no bruise, but he had learned a valuable lesson, he went back through and sat quietly with his parents until they were drunk enough to drive home.

The more I pour over that story, the more I realise I am incredibly proud of it.

Henry Hunter
Sept 09