You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Big Mouth Mama Cass.
I’m at restaurant watching Sunday afternoon football. My friend and I sit down next to a middle aged woman from Northern Illinois. She is average in every way. White. Middle aged. big hair. round face. dumpy frame.
If she got up and shot everyone in the bar and ran out. I am not sure my description to authorities would yield more than a composite of the stay puff marshmellow man.
We sit down. We smile politely. Big mistake. She interprets this as a sign that we want to engage her on all levels on every topic known to humanity.
Mama Cass starts revving her mouth like a tommy gun cutting down Mafiosos.
Her voice is harsh like marbles in a coffee grinder. Every syllable is a finger poke to the eye. She is a seat away and impossible to ignore like a pimple on your lip is impossible to ignore.
“Whereya from?” she bellows, putting her wine glass down.
I look over at her. She is handsome like crab grass. She is obnoxious like a Bronx cheer.
She is a Yankee through and through. That’s obvious the minute she pushes a syllable out of her pie hole.
Her words are northern and cold like arctic tundra.
I don’t mind Yankees, but I do mind obnoxious.
Big Mama Cass is Obnoxious with a capital O.
I’m trying to talk to my friend privately and the round woman with big sweaters and handbags slung over her shoulder intrudes into my conversation like a cattle prod introducing itself to a Holstein.
“Where ya from?” she says in a nasally voice that reeks of stupid and pejorative overtones.
“I’m from here,” I say attempting to give her an answer with practically no information.
“Where’s here?” she says probing like a NYC homicide detective.
“I’ve lived here my whole life,” my friend chirps in.
That’s when Cass starts deriding Southern accents.
“How Ya’ll doing,” she says accentuating each syllable.
I feel a pulse of anger coarse through my spine. I suddenly want this rotund bag of flesh to shut up.
She continues bashing Southern culture.
She doesn’t say that southerners sound stupid but it sure sounds like she feels this way. Her attitude is anything but gracious.
“You a Yankee?” I say sharply.
“From Northern Illinois,” she retorts, her words like stale beer.
“Chicago?”
“No. Northern Illinois,” she retorts like I really care.
“cornfields and not much else,” I smile and turn away.
“Oh now you’re just being rude,” she says boldly for all to hear.
I look at her incredulously. Is this for real. I just want to drink a beer and talk to a friend. I care more about my napkin getting dirty than this old hag.
I order a beer while the game goes into OT.
Both teams get a chance to score she bellows. “It’s a new rule this year”.
I take the bait. “Not if the first team scores a TD first,” I tell her.
“No, you’re wrong” she says, her voice causing blood to trickle out of ears of nearby diners.
Out of nowhere she tells me I have big beautiful blue eyes, then tells me I am insulting her. She tells me if we dated she would box my ears off.
“Oh we’d fight,” she says cackling like a loon.
“You and your husband sleep in different rooms?” I query.
Her face drops. “You betcha. We can’t get along.”
I am not surprised. This irritating shrew attacks like a frenzied pit bull without the social sophistication.
“what’s your name?” she suddenly asks.
I lie right to her face. “Bobby”
She looks at me not sure if I look like a Bobby or not.
I look at her like she is a bar cancer.
“You have a CNN voice,” she says.
“CNN voice? What the hell is that?”
“It’s a cable news outlet” she says.
Oh, I’m sorry. didn’t realize that. I’ve only been broadcasting since I’m 16 years old.
she explains that a CNN voice means I don’t have a discernible accent.
I tell her that I didn’t let my kids have an accent growing up because I didn’t want people like her to label them.
She will tell me that she is bugging me and she means nothing by it.
I smile like yes, you are right.
She will go on to tell me as many as three times that she is sorry and she shouldn’t interrupt my conversation with my friends.
It’s as if I am seated next to a nut job with tourettes.
I want to tell her she is a rude Yankee, but stay silent.
As she begins to pack up her personal belongings which are scattered all over the table, she reveals that she has a seizure disorder which s why she is walking home.
I don’t care if she is walking home. I just want her to start walking.
I’m not normally patient, and what little patience I have left is leaving like the Baptist bus out of whore town.
Finally, she gets up. She turns back to me.
“Yeah, you and I could never date. We’d fight.”
And with that she walks out the door, consumed by the setting sun.
And that is crazy.™