Sometimes:

…being recognized as female can be a helpful attribute! 

Recently I was running my errands in a nearby town, wearing a nondescript women’s polo top and pair of women’s shorts, with my slide sandals, etcetera.   I pulled into a “strip-mall-type shopping center”, and found my way forward soon blocked by an illegally-parked car – with driver still inside.  I waited a bit for them to start moving, which didn’t happen.  While I waited, a truck from a well-known “alternative delivery service”  – NOT the US Postal Service – roared up behind.    After a few seconds, the driver honked his horn at me. 

The driver of the still-illegally-parked car rolled down her window and motioned for us to go around.  So I started maneuvering my car to get past her without hitting anything or anyone.  The delivery truck driver was impatient and started blowing his horn harder and longer.   After I got past the parked car (which was obviously waiting for someone shopping in a nearby store) I pulled into a parking place just beyond her, to go into another store.  The delivery driver finally got past both of us, and pulled into a parking place several spaces beyond my car, taking two of them in the process.   He angrily jumped out and headed in my direction, obviously to confront me, just as I exited my car.  My sandals and white toe nails were first out of the car – his first clue.  Then my purse and long hair swung into view.

I thought I heard “oh, just a dumb broad” as he stopped in his tracks, turned around and began muttering and sulking as he walked back to his truck, defeated without lifting a finger.  Guess he didn’t want to risk a confrontation that he “might” win physically (or might not – I was clearly the taller and heavier “contestant”), but he would without a doubt lose the fight legally, and perhaps be given the opportunity to find a new career in the process – if his employer chose to fire him for assaulting someone while on duty.   There was a perfect witness: that illegally-parked driver whose actions started it all!   And because I’ve already had issues with that delivery company’s service, this incident has cost them.  They’ve now lost any personal overnight mail business I might have. They’re definitely not the only “fish in the sea.”

So always remember, you never know what excitement your day might bring! It was an unexpected surprise…which could have turned out so badly for one (or both) of us.

Mandy

PS: Three days later, that same delivery company delivered a shipment ordered prior to the incident above, by placing it in front of our home’s garage door while I was out, instead of the covered front porch. I rescued it before putting the car in the garage. Had I been home that day instead of out and about, I’d likely have backed over the box the next morning! Another “nail in their coffin.”