So this happened to me tonight:
I went out with my buddy Ryan and his girlfriend and some of their friends tonight. We got back to his girlfriend's house at about 12:30 AM, and most of the group left right afterward. Her brother was throwing up intermittently from too much drinking for a while, and the remainder of the group sat around bullshitting and occasionally checking in on him. After a while I look up, realize it's 2:45 AM and that I have a half-hour drive home to look forward to.
It's late, I'm tired, and I hadn't eaten anything in the past ten hours or so, so I thought I'd stop by McDonald's and get a burger and a Coke. I found one, but it was already closed, so I got back on the highway and found another one. I pulled into the drive-thru and waited for the server. A truck pulls in behind me.
A second or two later, I hear a voice from behind my car. "I see your sticker there. Are you making fun of my Lord?"
He was talking about a sticker that Harry gave me for my birthday a few years ago. It's a Thor fish- like the ubiquitous Jesus fish, but the fish obviously says THOR and has a little viking helmet and a hammer. To the best of my knowledge, my Thor fish has never hurt anybody or done anything except be a kitschy and fun little icon of my faith. It might be poking a little bit of fun at the Jesus fish phenomenon, but that's hardly the same as making fun of Jesus, I think.
So I ignored the guy and kept waiting for the server. I notice the truck has pulled up very, very close to my rear bumper. "Did you hear me?" the man, who looks to be in his early fifties, a white man with a gray mustache and glasses.
Stupid me, I called back, "No, sir," hoping that civility on my part would calm him down so I could order my goddamn hamburger.
"I said your sticker is making fun of my Lord. You get out and tear that sticker off right now."
"No!" I said. Then the guy opens his truck door and starts getting out. I floored it, got out of the drive-thru and pulled away back towards Highway 71. I spent some of the rest of the trip home looking anxiously in my rear-view mirror to see if I was being followed- silly, because due to road construction one had to take a really circular route to get back on the highway, but still, my heart was pumping pretty fast.
I don't know what he was planning to do. He might have been going to rip off my Thor fish himself. He might have been planning to come up and beat my ass. Hell, I thought I saw him looking down towards the floorboard, almost as though he were reaching for something, though it's also very possible that I'm adding that in just as a result of the adrenaline. I was certainly afraid a gun was coming into play, though.
But the point is, I thought- had hoped, anyway- that we were past this bullshit. I'm a grown American citizen: I have the right to have a silly little sticker on my car. You have the right to say you feel offended about it, of course. But that doesn't take away my right to have to possess the sticker. It certainly doesn't take away my right to make fun of Christianity, or any religion, if that's what I wanted to do. (That's never been my intent, by the way.)
I guess I've never had an experience of coming that close to violence as an adult. I would be lying if I said I'm not pretty shaken up about it. I'll probably have more to say about this soon enough; it seems like this is something I'm going to need to consider while constructing some new stories.
I went out with my buddy Ryan and his girlfriend and some of their friends tonight. We got back to his girlfriend's house at about 12:30 AM, and most of the group left right afterward. Her brother was throwing up intermittently from too much drinking for a while, and the remainder of the group sat around bullshitting and occasionally checking in on him. After a while I look up, realize it's 2:45 AM and that I have a half-hour drive home to look forward to.
It's late, I'm tired, and I hadn't eaten anything in the past ten hours or so, so I thought I'd stop by McDonald's and get a burger and a Coke. I found one, but it was already closed, so I got back on the highway and found another one. I pulled into the drive-thru and waited for the server. A truck pulls in behind me.
A second or two later, I hear a voice from behind my car. "I see your sticker there. Are you making fun of my Lord?"
He was talking about a sticker that Harry gave me for my birthday a few years ago. It's a Thor fish- like the ubiquitous Jesus fish, but the fish obviously says THOR and has a little viking helmet and a hammer. To the best of my knowledge, my Thor fish has never hurt anybody or done anything except be a kitschy and fun little icon of my faith. It might be poking a little bit of fun at the Jesus fish phenomenon, but that's hardly the same as making fun of Jesus, I think.
So I ignored the guy and kept waiting for the server. I notice the truck has pulled up very, very close to my rear bumper. "Did you hear me?" the man, who looks to be in his early fifties, a white man with a gray mustache and glasses.
Stupid me, I called back, "No, sir," hoping that civility on my part would calm him down so I could order my goddamn hamburger.
"I said your sticker is making fun of my Lord. You get out and tear that sticker off right now."
"No!" I said. Then the guy opens his truck door and starts getting out. I floored it, got out of the drive-thru and pulled away back towards Highway 71. I spent some of the rest of the trip home looking anxiously in my rear-view mirror to see if I was being followed- silly, because due to road construction one had to take a really circular route to get back on the highway, but still, my heart was pumping pretty fast.
I don't know what he was planning to do. He might have been going to rip off my Thor fish himself. He might have been planning to come up and beat my ass. Hell, I thought I saw him looking down towards the floorboard, almost as though he were reaching for something, though it's also very possible that I'm adding that in just as a result of the adrenaline. I was certainly afraid a gun was coming into play, though.
But the point is, I thought- had hoped, anyway- that we were past this bullshit. I'm a grown American citizen: I have the right to have a silly little sticker on my car. You have the right to say you feel offended about it, of course. But that doesn't take away my right to have to possess the sticker. It certainly doesn't take away my right to make fun of Christianity, or any religion, if that's what I wanted to do. (That's never been my intent, by the way.)
I guess I've never had an experience of coming that close to violence as an adult. I would be lying if I said I'm not pretty shaken up about it. I'll probably have more to say about this soon enough; it seems like this is something I'm going to need to consider while constructing some new stories.
people get too defensive about everything and it's just disgusting. i was actually talking to my manager tonight about how in schools with the separation of church and state they just ban everything that is even remotely offensive to anyone and it teaches these kids not to tolerate each other but to ban and exclude anything that doesn't agree with the mainstream and in fact i think they need to be the opposite especially in this day and age is not that they need to ban everything but in fact just the opposite they need to tolerate everything, that isn't harmful you know?, and teach these kids that just because it isn't what they agree with doesn't make it wrong.
it's just sickinging to know that the "free" country of these united states can still have such stupid people crawling around.