Hoodies Really ARE Menacing

Contrary to what you may think, no, this is not a rant about the recent Trevon Martin case.

I work at a small, family restaurant as my day-job. My job requirements REQUIRE me to periodically make food deliveries in all kinds of weather, sh*** & otherwise.

Recently between 940-945p, I had to make one such delivery. It was dark, it was miserably rainy, & of course it was hard to see the numbers on the actual houses. At one point, I saw someone on her porch smoking a cigarette in the general vicinity of my delivery. So I parked & go out & asked her if she knew where (my house number) was.

While I was talking to her, some guy in a car starts bitching at me about the rudeness of shining a flashlight in peoples face. I questioned why he thought that, there was only one person out before he spoke up (the cigarette lady), & informed him I was making a delivery & needed to find the house. He kept bitching at me so I simply choose to ignore him & continued talking w/ the lady on the porch.

Holy sh**! The guy freaked the eff out. He gets out of the car (much to the protestations of [presumably] his wife) demanding that I apologize, all the while getting in my face. I outright refused because I had NOTHING to apologize for. He then continues lecturing me about the virtues on not shining a flashlight in peoples faces, all the while pointing his finger against my chest (assault?).

At one point, he demands I get off his property & leave the area. I have no clue if I was but made sure I was standing on the sidewalk & pointed that fact out to him. He demands I leave the (bleepin') area & demands to know my name & where I worked. Like hell, I'm telling this pedestrian road-rager my name & place of employment. For all I know, he could fire-bomb my workplace in anger & then I'm out of a job. When I refused, he got mad & slapped my hand, sending my flashlight flying to the ground. By sheer instinct, I gave him a nice, hard shove.

As soon as I did that, I'm like "Oh, sh**! Just my luck, this guy will blow a gasket & I'll end up in the hospital." I ran to get my flashlight that's still on the ground, bolted back to the car, to get the food I'm supposed to deliver, the ticket that accompanies it, & jetted over to the opposite side of the street in a seemingly fruitless attempt to find my missing house.

The lady whom I'm supposed to deliver the food to, eventually flagged me down & we were kinda talking about it because they could hear most of the exchange w/ the guy from across the street. It was that loud.

Anyway, I tell my "war" story to the guys back at the restaurant. They got a big kick out of it because its just one of those absurd things.

If only it ended there...

When I get home, I come to find out that the household was visited by the cops. They were asking all sorts of questions, "Did I have any friends in (that) neighborhood?" "Does he drive a (insert the make & model of the car)?" "Do you know what he was doing over there?" This is all the while the family dog's barking up a storm.

At some point, the cops figured out I was over in that end of town because I was making a food delivery. (Well ya, that's what I told the pedestrian road-rager a couple different times!)

While I'm telling the cops my side of the story afterwards, they were like "Well, that's funny. He didn't tell us about (the finger-pointing & the hand slap)." In my head, I'm like "You think he'd admit that he assaulted a complete stranger?" The cop continues & tells me that the guy was concerned because there'd been a string of incidents in that neighborhood (he didn't elaborate) & he saw a guy in a hoodie, shining a flashlight (nevermind where the flashlight was actually shining), & he overreacted. Like that was a newsflash.

So there you have it, my own personal experience how simply wearing a hooded sweatshirt DOES INDEED cause a person to becomes 100x more menacing.

(rolls eyes)


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In other news...
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This is Kira.



Feel free to comment on any part of this if you so desire.