Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Old Girl Has a Street Encounter
A few days ago as I was leaving a Street Angels event, a man walked past me and asked if I was really a Street Angel and when I said yes, he said I should get the fuck out of town, meaning his town, a working- class suburb of the City of Milwaukee, and so my husband who was walking with me told the guy to move along which is something I’ve seen him to before with great effectiveness but this time, the guy started yelling about how Street Angels were all a bunch of addicts and that helping homeless people was for shit, and how he was a veteran and had gotten shot and how he hadn’t gotten shot to defend a bitch like me, which I wanted to take issue with because, you know, defending free speech would seem to be part of the deal, and surprising myself, I started to yell back, ripping off retorts like I’d written them on slips of paper I was pulling from the back pocket of my jeans, until after he’d told me for the umpteenth time what scum I was and how he was a veteran, I yelled that he was full of courage for yelling at an old lady on the street, and then I yelled have a good night sweetheart and got in our car, but later my husband said I told the guy to fuck himself at least ten times but I truly believe it was just once, it felt good no matter how many times it was, literally not taking any bullshit, yeah.
9 Comments on “Old Girl Has a Street Encounter”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
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“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
No surprise that you had the retorts at hand. It’s who you are. It took a lifetime to accumulate them. Glad you had the ideal opportunity to use them.
A cursing angel. I love the picture!
You’d have been proud. 🙂
<3 badass to the nth degree. just read the quote below today:
“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”
― Bayard Rustin
Dear lady…he was a an a-hole. You on the other hand defended yourself, and in the terminology of a long ago time “got your yah-yahs out!” In other wors you flattened him, and deservedly so. Many of these people don’t understand that they are committing assault. Free speech does not guarantee the right to assault others verbally, just to express ourselves. Bravo for not letting the assaultive jerk get away with it.
I agree with Ann, and I wish I could have been there to witness all the badass-ness 🙂
It was epic. LOL
You are a badass!
Wearing a Street Angels t-shirt makes anyone a badass. 🙂