Mysterious Ways

Holla,

During each evening that I have off from work, around 10 pm, I start having visions of Twix bars dancing around my head, softly whispering sweet mentions of caramel and cookie centers. As hard as I try, I am powerless to resist its urges, often leading to late night visits to the local gas station to fulfill my sugar-laden cravings.

Last night, as I rounded the corner of the AM/PM parking lot, I was greeted by a string of profanity-laced insults that were infused with enough anger and venom to make me stop in my tracks. I looked around the filling locations, noticing that all eyes were turned to a black Cadillac that was sitting in front of the gas station entrance. Within the vehicle, a woman was tearing into the person sitting in the passenger seat, who was blocked from my view as I approached the front doors.

Here are a couple of snippets from their constructive conversation (swear words have been abbreviated).

-"I hate looking at your f-ing face! It makes me want to f-ing throw up every time I f-ing see it!"
-"I am wasting my f-ing life with you. You are f-ing worthless!"
-"Don't say a f-ing word! I don't want to hear the f-ing sound of your f-ing voice!"
-"F you. F you. F you. F you, you f-ing piece of sh**"

This last one was shot out of the car windows as I rounded the rear bumper of the car and made my way into the store. Just as I was opening the door, I managed to catch a glimpse of the person on the receiving end of the conversation. He looked defeated, downcast, and was slumping as far as possible in the passenger side seat of the Cadillac. With every obsenity, I could see him cowarding a little further within the confines of his chair.

In the gas staition, I wandered through the candy aisles, keeping a close eye on the confrontation. Even through the glass walls, you could hear most of what was being said, which was decidely one-sided at that point. The woman would yell something at the guy, wait for him to open his mouth, and then cut him off with another string of obsenities.

As I approched the counter, the attendant asked whether I knew what was occurring in the car. I replied that I didn't. He said that he was supposed to put a stop to it, but was too scared to interfere at that point. I told him that I thought that this was a good idea, and we continued to watch their interactions as he rang in my Twix bar.

I eventually decided to leave the building and headed back to my apartment. I walked through the parking lot, hearing the woman continue to tear apart the guy, limb from limb. Just as I was turning into the alleyway, I saw a police car approach the Cadillac. Deciding that I needed to see the conclusion to the story, I stopped to watch the police officers pull each of the culprits out of the car.

The man, completely torn apart at this point, calmly put his hands on the hood of the car while one of the officers patted him down. The woman, on the other hand, was still feeling the coursing adrenaline within her veins. She turned her anger from the defeated man, to the officer that was trying to ask her questions.

"Don't f-ing touch me, you f-ing pig! We didn't do anything wrong! There's no reason for you to be here."

To his credit, the officer managed to calm her down for a bit, and started to ask her questions. I was too far away to hear their interactions and nearly turned to go home at this point. Luckily, I stayed just long enough to see the defeated man being handcuffed by the other officer and lead into the back of the squad car.

I believe that the police officers were just trying to seperate the two people in order to hear both sides of the story, but the frantic woman did not see it this way. She immediately transitioned from her relatively calm state, to the overly aggresive level, that she had held as I first approached the gas station. Only this time, instead of trying to melt the defeated man's face with her words, she became apologetic. She couldn't understand why the officers were taking him away, yelling obsenities in their direction. "F**k" was replaced with repeated "I'm sorry"'s in anything that she said to the man. Again, here are some brief snippits:

To police officers: "That's my husband! He didn't do anything wrong you motherf-ers!"
To the defeated man: "I'm sorry baby! This is all my fault. I'm so sorry!"

The officers managed to calm her down once again, probably explaining why they had put her husband in the back of the car. After watching her sob for a few minutes, I decided to head back to my apartment and attempt to recreate the situation to my roommate and on this blog.

Initially I could only laugh about what I had witnessed, chalking it up to life in the hood and interactions between a couple of crazies. However, as I started to really think about it, it seemed less and less extreme. Everyone that has been involved in a relationship has experienced one or two of these moments of insanity loss. There are times, in the heat of an argument, when things are said that a rationale human being would never let come out of their mouth.

But, in a relationship, both parties are a little bit crazy. Maybe not to the point of the couple that I saw last night, but crazy nonetheless. The smallest issues in a relationship can manifest themselves, over time, into a much larger point of contention between two people. Maybe it's the volume at which your partner watches TV, or the seven varieties of ice cream in the freezer, or how they choose to eat chicken wings.

Regardless of the situation, it can, occasionally, lead to an all-out cussfest. While it may seem rationale and justified to you at the time, to an outside party, these type of arguments are located centrally within crazy town. I think the key to any successful relationship is being able to recognize these insanity landmines and being able to apologize for any variety of names or swear words that you may have said during the madness.

I don't think that any relationship is immune to these moments, however, hopefully for most of us, these moments won't result in a large gathering of spectators and eventual police intervention.

-More to come...