almost perfect

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As I pulled up to a gas pump yesterday, a man came out of the gas station, screaming at me and waving his arms with an urgency appropriate only if the pump were wired to explode. I lowered my window.

"MOTHERFUCKER YOU ARE NOT GETTING THIS FUCKIN' PUMP! I BEEN WAITING IN LINE. YOU SEE MY CAR RIGHT THERE!" he screamed hysterically, pointing to a parked car 40 feet away.

There was a time in my life when I would not have laughed at him and driven to the gas station a block away. That time is past, and that's what I did. After making a joke, of course.

"And I was waiting in line since last Wednesday. My car was right over there," I said, chuckling and pointing to no space in particular.

He went quarter-crackhead, flying into an incoherent rage about my considerable history of victimizing him. He punctuated his list of grievances by punching the rear window of my car. (Half-crackhead would have been punching me. Full-crackhead would have been tearing off his own arm and clubbing the wrong windshield with it.)

"Good luck with life, " I said, rolling up my window and leaving to a torrent of threats and profanity. That's when I saw the two cops in their cruiser, pulling into the parking lot. This was so very close to being a better post.