I Was Standing In Line,

the interminable line, at the post office today. Usually there's not much back and forth between people while they wait with their packages or letters or harbingers of gloom and doom: the registered mail slip. I get these little yellow notices all the time in my business so I wasn't particularly concerned about the one I had in hand. And I usually don't pay much attention to the chatter that develops in these lines. But today was different.

A half dozen or so people behind me I heard some guy say, "I wonder what Martin Luther King would have said about all the votes that were lost in Florida". I turned around to see who had said this since, after all, the election was a while back and I thought most of the soreheads had long ago gone on to other things.

Then I heard, "Did you know that 90,000 votes weren't counted because the Republicans fixed the election".

I finally fixed my gaze on the speaker, a white guy who was obviously addressing an African-American lady in front of him. Her reply to him was unintelligible and she didn't seem interested in continuing the conversation but he pressed on with what was turning out to be a public diatribe.

He looked down at the ladies hand and said, "I got one of those, too". He was holding a registered letter notice as, obviously, she was. I don't remember her reply but he came back with, "Yeah, they gotta get more money out of us to buy bombs".

Now I was beginning to see what was up. He had a mostly African-American audience and was using the Martin Luther King thing to pander to them. He was getting bolder. "You got to listen to alternative radio to find out what's goin' on nowadays. You know about Pacifica on 90.1"? he asked no one in particular. By now the lady was trying to get as much distance between them as possible in a post office line. And, I had turned around facing him and was giving him my best "You're a loudmouth idiot and need to shut up" scowl.

That didn't faze him, in fact it seemed to embolden the idiot. "Yeah", he said, "Bush needs a lot more tax money so he can buy bombs to kill babys. His daddy sells 'em, ya know".

By now I'm giving him a look that could wilt an oak tree. My blood pressure was mounting and I'm just a thin hair away from confronting this imbecile. In my mind I begin forming the method I'd use to blast his sorry ass out of the water when somebody behind me taps me on the shoulder and says, "They're waiting for you at the counter". "Oh, sorry", I said as loud as I could, "guess I was thinking about how little our country means to some people who hold forth their distorted political views to a captive audience".

I moved off to the counter leaving bigmouth behind. He may have continued to spout after I left, I don't know. What I do know is I'm fed up with people of his ilk. In my adult life I have never been in a fight but I honestly believe that if I had been subject to this absurd asshole's drivel for another minute, I would have broken that record.