What happened to me today!

[Levina de Ruijter]

A few hours ago I was in the supermarket, getting some groceries. I was pushing a shopping cart and you know how it is, sometimes an isle is crowded and you have to wait a bit for someone to move out of the way or you ask them gently to do so. It's like very slow traffic and you give and take a bit. And it's always friendly.

So I was in an isle and from the other side a woman with cart comes walking towards me. I get ready to make a bit more room for her to pass. She doesn't slow down but marches on and pretty much rams me hard in the hip and thy. So I say "Ouch" and "What are you doing?" She doesn't respond, doesn't look at me, walks on as if I wasn't there. But I am now angry and as she walks past me, in a reflex I punch her on her upper arm, saying "Say something, will you?". Again she doesn't respond, ignores me and walks on and she's gone.

A few minutes later I meet her again in another isle. I look at her and see that she is young, maybe in her thirties. And now she looks back at me with the meanest expression on her face and then makes a gesture: finger across her throat. Twice. I was not afraid but I don't know this person and what she might or might not be capable of, so I go see the management. Long story short: turned out she is well known and wasn't even allowed in the store. I don't know how it ended as I left.

I never experienced anything like it. The way she acted was crazy. And she had the meanest expression on her face with very narrow eyes because she was squinting. A face and an expression I have never seen before. I'm thinking mental patient.

And all I wanted was to buy some groceries...

 

[inphoto]

Don't mess with strange people, you never know what they are drinking/ sniffing. Calm down and ignore them, they don't deserve your attention.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

Don't mess with strange people, you never know what they are drinking/ sniffing. Calm down and ignore them, they don't deserve your attention.

Maybe. But when she ran her shopping cart into me deliberately, I reacted before I could think it through. It was a gut reaction: you hit me, I hit you back. Probably not too smart.

 

[Jack Dawe]

Sounds like someone with serious mental problems. Best not to interact. You just don't know how it might end. Nutters are at best unpredictable and can be violent.

 

[Markuswelder]

There's some nut cases out there for sure. I've got to admit to getting triggered a bit quickly when confronted too.
Couple of months back I was happily driving along on a dual lane road, in my own lane minding my own business, and some nut case pulled alongside on a motorcycle. Wildly gesticulating and shouting profanities. WTF? Flicked him the bird, this set him right off. He spat on my window, the lanes merged a bit further down the road, he pulled in behind me, and started following me. Turned off, he followed. Okay d!ckhe@d, I'm not letting you follow me home. So I pulled over and stopped. He rode up to my window. Instead of winding down the window, I opened my door to get out. He then backed right off, and I started asking him what his problem was. All I got was incoherent rambling. I see. So I returned the abuse, I was about to grab his keys from the ignition and throw them as far away as I could, but thought better of it.
Drove off taking an extremely circuitous route in the general direction of home in case he was still following from a distance, low and behold I saw him a few blocks away in another altercation with someone else. So it obviously wasn't just me then

 

[Lyn]

People are much more aggressive nowadays. Maybe it's drugs or something. But all the violence on TV is also a bad thing. In between other programs they "advertise" for such movies.
Stay calm, stay safe please.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

I only fight with words, unless you attack me physically. That's what the woman in the supermarket did and I punched her on the arm. Although it was not a hard punch or anything, it was more a push. But the fact that she deliberately hit me with the shopping cart really threw me off. If it had been accidental and she would have said “sorry about that” all would’ve been fine, like it had been fine numerous times before as shopping cart collisions happen frequently, or somebody steps on your foot or something like that. But it’s always accidental. This wasn’t.

 

[ImageMaker]

(Deny pushing). You held your arm up in shock to steady yourself from the collision perpetrated by her.

Time for a coffee…

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

(Deny pushing). You held your arm up in shock to steady yourself from the collision perpetrated by her.

Time for a coffee…

 

[Capn Jack]

Yeah, that sounds like she has problems that really don't involve you except incidentally. I understand your reaction. I hope she is getting the help she needs.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

What happened just now is that I look out my window on the third floor and I see my resident pair of Great Crested grebes down in the canal with two chicks. So I go downstairs to take some shots with less of a balcony view. So I am taking some shots. Bad, very harsh light of a setting sun, so shots will probably be rubbish. But it's good to see the Grebe family. I even shoot the other parent coming in with goodies and the young ones getting fed.

I then leave to see someone half a block away. I come back 10 minutes later and see a group of gulls diving down and making a lot of noise. I look at it from a distance, thinking that someone threw out bread. I then realise there are other birds in the water. I take my gear out of the bag and sure enough: the grebes are there and there is now only one chick left!

The gulls leave. And the parents shake themselves and with the one chick disappear underneath the nearby bridge. It's possible that the little one was hiding on a parent's back, but I doubt it.

 

[Blackbird]

What happened just now...

Life is cruel.

 

[Jack Dawe]

What happened just now is that I look out my window on the third floor and I see my resident pair of Great Crested grebes down in the canal with two chicks. So I go downstairs to take some shots with less of a balcony view. So I am taking some shots. Bad, very harsh light of a setting sun, so shots will probably be rubbish. But it's good to see the Grebe family. I even shoot the other parent coming in with goodies and the young ones getting fed.

I then leave to see someone half a block away. I come back 10 minutes later and see a group of gulls diving down and making a lot of noise. I look at it from a distance, thinking that someone threw out bread. I then realise there are other birds in the water. I take my gear out of the bag and sure enough: the grebes are there and there is now only one chick left!

The gulls leave. And the parents shake themselves and with the one chick disappear underneath the nearby bridge. It's possible that the little one was hiding on a parent's back, but I doubt it.

Rough. On the one hand that's nature for you. On the other, maybe the gulls wouldn't be there if it weren't for the food that's the product of human wastefulness. That's certainly the case with city gulls in the UK.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

I'm off to bed, but I have some good news. I took a quick look at the pics of the Grebe family and the one chick was indeed hiding on the parent's back! So they're both still alive. Phew. That makes me feel loads better.

Goodnight!

 

[ImageMaker]

I'm off to bed, but I have some good news. I took a quick look at the pics of the Grebe family and the one chick was indeed hiding on the parent's back! So they're both still alive. Phew. That makes me feel loads better.

Goodnight!

I read differently when I saw “with 2 chicks…”. Of course I didn’t know what a Grebe family was.

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

I read differently when I saw “with 2 chicks…”. Of course I didn’t know what a Grebe family was.

LOL It was a follow up on the previous post. But I can understand the eh… confusion.