Anal-ness

Have you ever watched a movie or read a story or perhaps watched a Youtube.com incident of embarrassingly anal people? I'm sure we've all heard a story somewhere of some self centered person making a complete fool of themselves in the interest of protecting their rights or their pride or their money or... their shiny new red Dodge Charger. And, not to pick on the rich, often the stories are of the rich and/or famous (or the wanna-be's) with their ATM hearts and credit card brittle personalities.
Like each of you I'm aware that these people exist. I have just not had many (if any) personal clashes with them....until yesterday. It was all so ridiculous I wasn't sure whether to be angry or to find it one of the funniest things in the world. So actually, I did both. Laughed and got mad, that is.
Justin and I were on the ferry from WA islands to WA mainland. The ferry announced our destination and asked us all to return to our vehicles so we roused from our naps and hustled down the stairs to the parked car. As we emerged from the stairwell we were "greeted" by Ms. DON'T TOUCH MY DODGE CHARGER!! She was parked directly in front of the stairwell, door open, leaning out of her car, glaring at every single person that walked by and barking, "PLEASE, don't touch the CAR!"
Geez lady, freak out already. What do you think we're going to do, kick it on our way by. Dump our leftover coffee on the hood. Bounce a basketball off of it? We were WALKING TO OUR CAR, not vandalizing the place! Seriously...every single person that was getting off on that side of the ferry got to hear, "DON'T touch the car! PLEASE DON'T touch the car. Don't touch the CAR!!" in a steady nauseating stream. And every one of us reacted the same, we just looked at her. It was so ridiculous and uncalled for that no one had any response other then to pause 1 or 2 seconds in confusion, shrug, and walk away.
And of course, as she's daring any of us to breathe in her air, there's a dog jumping up and down in the back seat. Yeah that's right, barking up a storm, pawing the seats, and jumping up on the windows. I guess you gotta pick your ulcers don't you!
I got in our car in a huff, a very unnecessary huff really, her attitude shouldn't dictate mine but I kinda let it. And as I'm gritting my teeth and dreaming up scathing retorts, a very old, very unassuming little couple ambled past.
The little gray haired woman decided she wanted to drive so she squeezed between their vehicle and El Snabbios to get to the driver's side, steading herself all the way with her hands firmly planted on the hood of the shiny red wonder.
I saw smoke coming from behind the dash.
Then the elderly, unassuming woman decided she didn't want to drive afterall...so she slowly squeezed back through the narrow opening, hands all over the car.
Snobbio couldn't take it anymore and exploded from her car. "DON'T touch the car! PLEASE TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF MY CAR!!"
And old people, you gotta love 'em. They're so unruffled. They looked at her as if she was very interesting and just carried on. They traded positions, using the car for balance all the way as if they were completely oblivious to the frantic woman sprouting gray hairs a few feet away from them.
We all know with absolute, documented certainty that her car will depreciate. A rock will hit it. Birds will poop on it. Random things will scratch it. It WILL happen. And it will end up being just another old car. But for a while in its glory days, it will serve to age and stress one poor woman. It almost makes me feel sorry for her. Thats a lot of wasted energy!