How to insult someone who is already a c*nt

What happens when all the four-letter words that you learnt at primary school fail catastrophically to express your emotions at a given moment?

My weekend began, after an uncommonly unpleasant week at work, late on Friday evening by finding that our little Dachshund (pronounced “Ducks-hund”, idiots, not dash-hound) had attacked the dustbin and distributed a few days’ worth of sticky trash evenly around the driveway. Left with no choice but to clean up before I could proceed further, I stepped out of my car and directly into a commendably-styled and fragrantly-laid pile of dachshund turd. That set off a fine string of fucking and cunting which I tied off, as you would the arse of a balloon, only after I remembered who our neighbours are.

They are a retired Anglican priest and his wife. They are the sweetest, kindest neighbours – no, people – I have probably ever met, and they live a thin Vibracrete wall away. Mrs Priest (I rather not sully their names here) sends over Kosher gifts for Michelle at Rosh Hashanah and Pesach. She sends over chocolates and treats for my girls at Christmas and Easter. She sent heartfelt condolences when Michelle’s dad died in June. Mr Priest (retired) was presiding at a service at St James in Kenilworth twenty years ago when armed gunmen stormed the congregation and shot up a whole flock of worshippers. If we were Muslims or Hindus or Baha'i or Shinto or your basic howling athiests, Mr and Mrs Priest would drop off appropriate offerings at any time of year.

They do not deserve to hear my Tourette’s-inspired tirades.

On Saturday morning, having left out the soiled Timberlands (which have a very complex and intricate tread pattern) the night before, I decided to clean them with a hose and a sosatie stick. I began with the hose, which did nothing more than chase dog-turd from one involved piece of sole to the next. I progressed to the sosatie stick, which proved more effective. Then I made the mistake, after securing a particularly satisfying chunk of turd, to flick the stick towards me instead of away. Thankfully I had my mouth closed.

But only for an instant, because of course said mouth opened to release the usual chain of expletives, which dried up only when I once again remembered who our neighbours are.

Although my boots were clean, I felt vaguely unsatisfied. I’d cursed and blinded, and genitalia-ed and sphincter-ed my way through the process, but nothing I’d said had brought any relief. Such is the way of cliches.

I had my opportunity to remedy things sooner than I might have wished.

On the same Saturday evening, driving through an intersection on a green light, well below the speed limit (only because there was a Toyota in front of me, but more about Toyota drivers in a future post), someone decided that my car was a mere mirage and that it would be fine to turn across the oncoming traffic. A second earlier, I would have made it through. A second later and it would have been a classic three-quarter head on, the kind of accident that kills more people than any other. The actual second, though, involved the kind of metal-on-metal sound that you don’t want to hear outside of those Russian dash-cam movies you see on YouTube.

Thus is the universe, an unpredictable confluence of x, y and z coordinates which every now and then have you at their intersect.

Before I continue, I submit in mitigation that I am a car person. That an injury to the Audi is totally the wrong kind of ding in the universe. That cars have souls (just like dogs – see the post below). That I don’t deserve to have three drops of wee squeezed out of me in fright at the intersection of Paradise and Edinburgh, when all I’m trying to do is tootle home for dinner after a bit of lifting. That nothing I've done deserves the round of insurance waffle, hire-car negotiations and panel-beater quotes that I now face.

I’m sorry to say that I did not behave like a big person.

The perpetrator, which she was, guilty to the tee and admitting it, was a surprisingly shaky woman of fifty or so. I didn't care who she was.

I began by asking, loudly to be honest, if she had been oxygen-deprived at birth.

I then asked her, even more loudly, how exactly she’d taught herself to balance on her hind legs given so many eons of ancestors swinging among the branches of her family tree.

I asked her, louder still, if she had willfully continued the family tradition of dropping babies on their heads.

Noticing she had a child in the car – wide-eyed and probably whip-lashed – I asked her how on earth she had the sheer temerity to breed, and thereby to unleash the output of her own stunted genes on coming generations.

I indicated how difficult it must be for an intellectual amputee such as she to put one foot in front of the other without cocking it up and hitting her head on the kitchen sink. 

I asked her if she’d had a stroke while trying to cross the intersection, or if her mental and physical capacities were, on a day-to-day basis, typically those of a carrot.

When she blinked uncomprehendingly, I informed her that she was just one more unflushable floater in the gene pool of life.

I declared, without contradiction from her, that she was living proof of what transpired when cousins fucked.

And then I asked for her name and phone number.

I’m not particularly proud of this, but that’s how it came out. A little like sea-sick, which comes out even though you don't want it to.

If I were a better-formed human being, I would have patted her on the shoulder and said, “It’s okay, nobody got hurt.” Which thankfully nobody did. If I was an even nicer guy, I might have offered her another gin and tonic to calm her nerves. And today, it's what I wish I'd done.

But such is middle-class, suburban life. We fret too much, worry too much, swear too much – when there are so many other ways to hurt a person who made an honest mistake and doesn’t deserve to be hurt (that much).

We bitch about a piece of engineering because it's broken, not because it broke absorbing the impact. We whine about dogshit and having to have two car doors replaced at the expense of the insurance company. We shriek at the wrong people.

On Sunday morning I read that 59 people had been killed in a shooting in a mall in Nairobi. I read that more Syrians were killed by other Syrians. That a few homeless (ie, nameless) people had frozen to death over the last cold snap right here in Cape Town.

My weekend’s lows were a spatter of dogshit in the chops and two dinged car doors. My highs were a card game of “Speed” with my youngest daughter, who beat me in every game, and a lazy Sunday family lunch on the first day of what seems to, finally, be spring.

Perhaps it’s time for a bit of perspective, and to take a few lessons on how my neighbours see the world around them.