The Dark Side of the Bar

Lately I've noticed that the bar has made me kind of umm... sensitive. I've always considered myself a fairly patient individual, but lately, umm, not so much.

With so many good movies out right now, it's damn shame that the last one I saw was Star Wars. Not that that was a bad movie - I actually really liked it - but maybe that's the reason that movie is stuck in my head right now. What I'm getting at here, is that I do believe I've recently crossed over to the Dark Side, very much like Anniken did. I am constantly finding myself wishing horrible demises upon people who engage in behavior that, two months ago, I would have found rather innocuous. "Non-bar-conformists," if you will. I say I've "crossed over," because I'm quite certain I've learned to channel my hatred to wreak havoc upon those who defy my present, more stringent ideal of decency and reasonableness (GODDAM IT, I hate that word.)

Anyway, example:

Yesterday I got stuck on an evening rush our train, which I usually go to great lengths to avoid because they're so aggravating. I would have made it out of NYC before rush hour if I hadn't left my cell phone in Brooklyn. Actually that's not entirely true. I could have made it even if I did leave my cell phone in Brooklyn, if I had only realized that I left it in Brooklyn before I got on a train in Penn Station. At least I realized it before the train left, but at that particular moment, such a truth was of zero consequence to me and did nothing to help subside my anger.

Now I had to go all the way back down to Brooklyn, and back to Penn Station, just to get on the very train that I tried so desperately to avoid earlier.

So I went back, got my phone, returned to Penn Station, got on a train, and closed my eyes, listening to the soothing siren sound of Professor Daniel Fessler's PMBR contracts lecture.

"I smell popcorn," I thought to myself. And it made sense that I smelled popcorn because the guy sitting in the seat next to me was working on a freshly popped bag of Pop-Secret. My recently aqcuired way-over-sensitive temper kicked in and I thought "What kind of an asshole eats microwave popcorn on the train?" I wasn't mad so much that he was eating, as I was that he was eating something so aromatic - good or bad smelling, it doesn't matter - in a closed public space, and that now I was gonna have to smell it for an hour, all the way back to New Brunswick.

I tried to think of a justification defense for choking him, but thought of nothing, and stopped short of checking my Crimlaw notes to see if maybe I was forgetting one.

But just watching him made me angrier and angrier. Then he swung his legs out into the aisle and crossed his legs, blocking anyone that might try to get by. "Who does this guy think he is? Isn't anybody gonna do anything to stop him?" We can't let him get away with this!!!" is all I could think.

Then he started spilling popcorn all over his seat and the floor... and any popcorn that fell into his lap, he very nonchalantly swept onto the seat or floor with his hand. I thought about confronting him. "You know," I would say, "I don't have a problem with you eating popcorn on the train, but do you have to eat from your hand like your performing cunninlingus on it?"

I hesitatingly decided against the confrontation, but the Dark Side was beginning to take over.

And then he went too far. He removed from his bag a pint of orange juice. I can't honestly say which made me madder: the fact that he had more food, or the absurdity of an individual who drinks orange juice with popcorn.

As he took his first sip, I relaxed and allowed the hatred and the anger to flow thru my veins. I concentrated all my rage at him. And then I did it...

...I spilled his orange juice down the front of his shirt, all over his lap, and even more impressively, into his bag of Pop-Secret, and I did it all using nothing but my rage.

"That'll teach him," I thought, after I laughed outloud. Still not completely vindicated, I waited impatiently for the conductor to come and check his ticket, hoping I could sneak a peak at where he was going, in hopes that he was going even further then I was, and would thus have to ride in the crowded, air-conditioned train, covered in orange juice for as long as possible. And sure enough he was... all the way to Trenton, end of the Northeast Corridor line. Now I can't prove that I used The Force to send him all the way to Trenton, but I can't prove that I didn't either. And I really hope that at Trenton, he had to pick up a Septa train to Philly.

So now that I know I can exercise such wrath, I can't wait to find another unexpecting, and probably otherwise undeserving individual to smite. I'm gonna like the Dark Side.

[Cue music. Roll credits]