IT'S NOT OK

Last night I went to the spring concert that Steve had with the community band that he plays with.

The spring concerts are always held in the gymnasium of the church where they rehearse, and so it's a little more loose and informal than say, the Christmas concert that is held in the sanctuary. Also, because it's being held in the gym, the acoustics are not so great and when the band is warming up (which isn't part of the concert, obviously) it's harder to chat with the people sitting next to you.

The organist from our church had driven out to hear the concert and she and I were sitting together talking about this and that. The band was doing the warm up, so we had to talk a little louder than usual just so we could hear each other, but we weren't talking any louder than anyone else in the room. I saw her expression change into one of confusion in the middle of our conversation, and she pointed to herself and mouthed "me?" at someone sitting beyond me, the way you do if you aren't sure if someone across the room is waving to you or not. I had seen a guy out of the corner of my eye waving his hands like he was trying to get someone's attention, but since we didn't know him, I did think anything of it. When I turned my head to see who she was looking at, I saw that same guy that was sitting a row ahead of us and several chairs down looking angry and pointing at us. So I did the same thing and pointed at myself to see if it really was us he was talking to and he said, kind of loudly, "Yes, you, both of you. Shut up. SHUT UP RIGHT NOW."

Ok, so my first reaction was to think "Who the fuck are you to tell me to do anything?"  Also, I don't like being told to shut up like that, by someone I do not know and who I could not be bothering in the least. So I flipped him off and went back to my conversation.  I mean, the hell, right?

The hell indeed.  The man got up, walked in front of us and went off on a tirade about how we were being rude and disrespectful, and how we needed to leave if we couldn't shut up.  I was completely baffled, because we were literally two of probably 100 people in that room talking, and we weren't yelling or making anymore noise than the rest of them, and the concert hadn't even started yet!  I have a pretty quick temper, so my instinct was to jump up and get into his face and tell him to leave us alone, but for some reason I didn't do that. Just looking at this goon, I realized if I did that, he would have hit me. I have no doubt of that. He was scary.  His face was all bruised up like he'd recently been in a fight, and he was wearing a wrist brace, and something about him made me realize that he wasn't all there in his head.  He wasn't like the mentally disabled people I deal with at work, but he was not mentally OK.  I'm not sure what I said back to him, although I couldn't stop my smart mouth anymore than I could stop a train with my bare hands, but I do remember telling him that sure, we'd stop talking, would that make him feel better?  I guess it did, because we walked back to his seat like he'd just told us what for.  That made me mad, because now I knew he felt vindicated for yelling at two women who were literally doing nothing, and something like that would make him feel comfortable doing it again to someone else.. It was weird and scary, because it came out of nowhere.

Halfway during the concert, the man got up and walked behind us and put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down and apologized for being rude. He did that to both me and Karen, and I have to say, that was just as scary and weird as the yelling thing. All I could say was that it was OK, and he went back to his seat.

But you know what? It wasn't Ok. He yelled at us for no reason, he picked us out of a crowd of others to...I dunno... make himself feel big and important.  He scared Karen, and she is the kind of nervous tempered woman who would let something like this upset her for a long time. Also, and what I didn't know until later, was that Anthony (who was in the back of the room and saw what was going on) walked up behind us while the guy was yelling at us to leave, and that was when he walked back to his seat. So that guy was the kind of asshole who doesn't mind yelling at women and telling them what they should do, but when a man comes by, he acts as though everything is fine.

The worst part to me, though, is that he scared me. He had no right to do that. I should be able to go to a fracking concert without some random dude deciding I'm talking to loud for his taste and jumping on my case. I shouldn't have to tell a person like that that everything is OK when it isn't, just so that nothing else happens. I am angry at myself for being scared. It makes me feel small and weak and ineffectual, and I am none of those things. I shouldn't need a flipping bodyguard to listen to music!  I'm tired of being afraid someone is going to hurt me all of the time. I have to deal with that at work, I shouldn't have to deal with it anywhere else.

I wish I had a clever way of ending this, but I don't. I am still embarrassed that it scared me so badly, and I'm mad that such a small and unimportant situation, which is fairly tame in the scheme of things, unsettled me so much.