I just got cursed out at Wal-Mart.
Wait, let me change that. I just go CUSSED out at Wal-Mart!
There I was last weekend with my two sons, shopping for toiletries for our vacation, when a young, attractive black woman (I thought she was 16, maybe 18) walks by us talking on her cell phone.
Just as she passes us, she says, “And the f****er stole a rental car.”
I was stunned. Of course, I had to speak up.
“Oh my, don’t use that language in public.”
Her response to me was, “No, you didn’t tell me what to do. I’ll use any m***erf****ing language I want to. I’m grown.”
My response was, “If you were grown, you wouldn’t be using that kind of language in public in the first place.”
Her friend said to me, “So, you don’t cuss? You must be a church lady.”
Now you know that’s the funniest part of the story.
It went on from there, with me trying to explain to her that there was nothing appropriate or grown about it and that there were children (mine) within earshot of her.
She stood there in her do-rag, head bopping, telling me that no one told her what to do, not even her momma.
I kept my cool, never raising my voice. She kept proclaiming that she was grown, until I had to ask for her age.
“Twenty-four. I’m about to turn 25. You want to see my driver’s license?” That added to my shock and disappointment.
As others in the aisle stared at the woman-child in disbelief and a few expressed their verbal agreement with my stance, I told my sons that her terrible behavior was the very reason their father and I demanded that they behave at home and in public, so that when they were really grown up, no one would ever have to correct them as I had to correct this woman.
One son told me I should call the police. The other said she was like the people he saw on the drug films they showed in school.
I left that aisle and continued my shopping. But my heart wasn’t right. I felt convinced that I hadn’t handled it correctly. That I even felt a measure of smug superiority over this child. I didn’t like the mixed emotions I was left with. I wondered if I should try to find her in the store and talk some more.
Before I could decide what to do, there she was walking towards me.
I put my hands on her shoulders and said, “I need to apologize to you.”
She tilted her head and smiled a little.
“You were right, I shouldn’t have told you what to do. I should have asked you to stop using that kind of language.”
She accepted my apology, saying that she hadn’t noticed my sons and if I had asked her to stop cussing instead of telling her, she would have complied.
I did tell her that there are times when we have to do what we are told even if the delivery of the message isn’t pleasing to us. She said, “Girl, even my boss knows better. He knows how I am.”
Last week I said I was going to follow up my column on work ethics, but getting cussed out in Wal-Mart was a real life study of the issue. I would love to know how she, at 24, came to be the kind of angry young woman who thinks it’s okay to use the F-word in public and then cuss you out for questioning her behavior. It was a sobering and yet uplifting experience.
I’m blessed to know that my children could end up just like her if my husband and I aren’t diligent and careful. And I just know that I have to say what must be said even if others don’t want to hear it.