Yesterday morning I experienced two back-to-back situations that left me feeling disappointed in humanity. I know there are endless examples of beautiful and amazing humans out there, and I generally prefer to focus on them. But I had a hard time shaking this!
Situation #1
Due to the impending snowstorm, I decided to make a quick grocery store run Saturday a.m. On the way there, I swung through a local drive-thru to grab a drink. I pulled up to the speaker, and as I finished placing my order, I glanced over at the couple in the car next to me (at the other speaker). I noticed the (late-20s? aged) woman in the passenger seat was rolling down her window. She then reached down to the car’s cup holder, grabbed an empty iced coffee cup (complete with the lid and straw) and proceeded to casually DROP IT OUT THE WINDOW. Onto the drive thru parking lot ground. Her boyfriend/husband guy apparently had no problem with this, either, and didn’t bat an eye.
My eyes were bugging out of my head. WHAT?! I literally cannot imagine doing that. Who on EARTH did she think was going to pick that up??? My mouth dropped open and I inched my car forward and like, glared at her…(hoping my face portrayed, “What the heck did you just do?? I SAW YOU.”). It took all my strength to not go yell at her to pick up her garbage this very instant. But, people are crazy these days, so, it’s just too risky. Don’t want to get shot over a coffee cup. 🙂
Situation #2
25 minutes later, inside the grocery store….
I was heading down an aisle with a few people in it. Toward the end, on the left hand side, a gentleman was parked in a scooter, browsing the spices or something (essentially blocking half of the aisle). As I approached, a woman wheeled around the corner, trying to go in the opposite direction I was. Due to the man in the scooter, there was only one side open, for one person to squeeze through. I was already part way into the space, so it would have made more sense for me to just hurry on through. But, trying to be nice, I stopped my cart, backed way up to give her plenty of space to get past me, smiled (with my eyes…wearing a mask 🙂 ) and waved her forward. “Go ahead!”, I said in what I thought was a very friendly voice.
She completely ignored me, didn’t make eye contact, and just walked right past me. No smile, no thanks, nothin’. 😦
Obviously, I didn’t need her to bow down and kiss my feet for letting her go past me, but it just seemed very rude and ungrateful, since I very evidently went out of my way for her.
I guess I’m that person who waves if you let me go ahead of you at a 4 way stop, or the person who apologizes if I need to step in front of you, or the person who “runs” a little to cross the street (while waving “thanks!”) if you stop your car for me to cross.
(I was especially horrified by the blatant disregard for the littering in #1. The other woman’s poor manners just kind of irked me.)
I decided to turn both of these into the best positive that I could, and used them as “teaching moments” for the boys. I went home and relayed the stories to them and we talked about how each situation could have been handled differently. Thank goodness, I’m very confident that they already knew this. May no child of mine ever be caught littering in a fast food restaurant parking lot.
To quote my husband one more time this weekend, in response to my animated retelling of what I viewed as very poor adult behavior…..“Well, YOU just keep doing the right thing. That’s all we can really do!” Yep.
In the afternoon, we went to the nature preserve by our house for a winter walk. It hit the spot. The cold, fresh air, walking in the snow…perfection. By the end, I had completely forgotten about the morning’s annoyances.
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for shovels, snowblowers, car scrapers…all the stuff you need to deal with winter weather. 🙂
GRATEFUL KAE 
I am liking your husband more and more, such a wise man. hahahha… i think my husband would have said the same thing, and if I keep talking about it, he’d get impatient of me making a big fuss about something that is not a big deal for him.
humanity is beautiful in general, i just read it from Brene Brown’s book, the hard question of whether people genuinely try their best. We don’t know the whole story behind why they are doing what they do, what happened to them that day, we just use our story/thinking to justify their behaviour. Not to say they have right to do what they did, I’d be feeling the same as you, but know that there might be something else that what we see help us to let it go easier.
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Our husbands sound so similar! I especially thought that in your previous post when you talked about Ivan and social media. My husband is exactly the same. He is barely on FB and doesn’t need to unfollow people because he doesn’t get upset by what he sees. He just rolls his eyes and moves on. Oh to be like that!
Those 2 encounters would have pissed me off, too! Especially the littering!! Why???? How lazy and rude! I am like you and also tend to be overly friendly with the hand waving at stop signs or when someone lets me merge into their lane, etc.
The snow pics are pretty! We just got a dusting, which my husband was very happy about. We live on a corner lot on a steep hill so he hates doing snow removal! We also have a lot of sidewalks that can’t be clearer by the snow blower so when I don’t have a newborn, I usually offer to shovel those as it’s a good workout. But it’s just not possible right now so it all falls on him!
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