No, it’s not a sequel to the early blog1 with the same title (except for Part 2).
No one asked me that question in this blog.
But the early blog reminds me of a different but related event.
The said event was my and my family’s move from Bethesda to Rockville, MD in the spring of 2004. Prior to the move, I had been renting a place for lodging since my graduation from Harvard. That means I had been renting an apartment or a house for about 18 years.
The last time I rented a place for lodging, I had a family of four (Denise and two young daughters). It was our daughters’ first home, and we rented it for five years. By then, we decided to buy a house in Rockville. It was near Georgetown Preparatory School, a Jesuit college preparatory school for boys.
So, you ask me, why the hell am I talking about moving from a rental to a house of our own? Well, the move involved lipreading on my part.
Before I go further, I have to mention one of my chats with Carlos, a college roommate of mine at Harvard. One day when we were juniors, we discussed about swear words we would use to kid each other. Carlos told me that he would not appreciate being called one particular swear word, and that was ‘son of a bitch.’ Of course, it’s four words long, but it sounds like one swear word. Carlos explained that it showed (and still shows) a lack of respect towards someone’s mother, especially when the mother and the son are really close to each other. I understood and wholly accepted his explanation, but I had not felt the full impact of such a slang term until 19 years later.
I felt that impact during the move from Bethesda to Rockville. After our professional movers placed all of our stuff in their truck, Denise and the girls left the rental house first. Then I left there in another car, followed by the truck. My plan was to drive in front of the truck so that it wouldn’t get lost on the way to the first house of our own. Somehow, either I drove too fast and/or the truck moved too slowly. So I had to slow down. Finally, I came to a stop when I saw the red traffic light along Rockville Pike. Soon after I came to the stop, I saw to the right that another car stopped. Its driver was a man in his seventies with a puzzled look. I realized that he wondered why the hell I was slowing way too much, and I wished I could explain to him that I didn’t want the moving truck to get lost in case I drove too fast.
As soon as the traffic light turned green, the driver, thinking I couldn’t hear him, said something. That was frigging clear to me, however – he called me a SOB (the whole thing, not just an abbreviation). I was really surprised with what he called me, even though he didn’t know me. I really wanted to drive fast and give him the finger or even enunciated the same term back to the driver so that he could realize that I did read his lips very well. However, I couldn’t let it ruin the important day of moving. So the move was completed without further incident.
If I could not see the face or name of someone calling me a SOB, I wouldn’t care. But I did see the face of a puzzled man who still managed to piss me. So whenever I think of that event, I will attempt to pass one single thought, psychically, to that 70-something year-old driver.
You motherf___!
Reference
Lol