I had the slimiest encounter with Evil Corporate America yesterday. They love to lure you in with professions of serving you with the utmost respect but the system is designed in a way to screw with both the customer and the employees. Pissed off at the company and so tempted to yell bad bad names at their people but its employees are just foot soldiers trying to stay alive on the blood soaked battlefield. Long story short, I left the horrendously sickening Victoria Secret store on 3rd street Santa Monica Promenade in a quiet boiling rage. Tourists around me were smiling, laughing and shopping - happily sharpening the teeth of 'nice harmless grandma' who is actually the big bad wolf as he gleefully prepare to snarl "All the better to eat you with" when the time is ripe.
I got into my car and like a typical Los Angeleno, raged with the machine and its sound system.
Now if you have driven around Santa Monica before, you know that they have random pedestrian crossings along their major roads. (btw, whoever planned it that way needs his/her road planning license revoked. It's LA. Cars trumps people and so with such a predisposition, sometimes cars TRAMPLE over people)
I scowled at every red light and abused the gas pedal every chance i got. My head throbbed and my hands gripped into the rubbery portions of the steering wheel. I stared straight ahead, staring at only the car in front of me and nothing else. Didn't even know what street I was on, I just knew I was heading east. I was majorly triggered and seething...mad. In the mist of the haziness, the winged one with the ridiculous halo struggled to get my attention as it forced my lungs to take slow deep breaths and attempted to transfer the anger-induced-strength from my right leg to my jaw as I bit down on my left fist, hard. All my focus was on the car in front of me but as some of the haze dissipated, my eyes relaxed and noticed that the cars on the other lanes had started braking. Suddenly I felt like I going too fast. Something was not right. Instinctively my eyes swept all over as I slowed down. A yellow pedestrian sign was up and not too far ahead were white strips on the road. A lady and two little girls were teetering at the side of the road, trying to get to the other side with their lives and limbs intact. I rolled to a stop while taking another deep breath and trying to keep the one with the pitch fork from constructing a frustrated sneer on my face as I nodded to the lady to let her know they're safe to pass.
She lifted her hand in acknowledgment, nodded and...smiled. As the Mary Poppins-esque lady walked forward, her girls -blissfully unaware of the veins that moments ago were popping out of my neck - looked at me, smiled and started skipping alongside their guardian.
The winged one with the ridiculous halo gave me a pointed look while the one with the pitch fork suddenly went missing.
"Ahh what the hell," I thought to myself, "I'm going to get some Jamba Juice."
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