Crazy People. The Kindness of Strangers.

I am very upset by something that happened to me today. I was standing on a sidewalk somewhere in the heart of the financial district in the city, eating a packet of chips, minding my own business while waiting for my husband to swing by with the car when a man walked past me yelled f* off and spat at me. I was so shocked all I could do was yell "Oh my God, you're disgusting!" He just kept walking as if nothing happened. He is obviously not right in the head. I wasn't even looking at him and I only noticed him after he yelled at me. He was a big bear of a man but I was ready to throttle him. I really wanted to unleash my entire vocabulary of curse words and trust me it would have been colourful but then I would probably look even crazier than him. I wasn't scared of him and it certainly wasn't the first time I've encountered a lunatic in the city but I also knew that it was pointless to start a fight with someone who's crazy and not to mention five times the size of me. Hubby arrived two minutes later and I was still shaking with rage. What upset me most was that there was no consequence for his action. I just kept reminding myself that his punishment is the life that he leads because it must be pretty sh!t for him to end up mentally unstable. Luckily he was far away enough from me that most of his spit ended up on the ground but one drop did hit me on the forehead. The grossness of it makes my skin crawl. I had a scalding hot shower (which I'm sure did wonders for my eczema that is fast becoming out of control) as soon as I got home and I washed my hair three times in case he got me there too.

Thankfully, there are far more polite, friendly, helpful and kind people out there than the crazy ones. For example, the day that I took Bubby to the museum I dropped my umbrella as I lifted the pram out of the train and it fell onto the tracks. If it was any other umbrella I would have just left it. It wasn't an expensive umbrella, in fact it was just from a discount store and one of the ribs is broken and held together by a bright orange packing tape with fragile written on it but I bought it in Tokyo when hubby and I were on our honeymoon so it had sentimental value. I was ready to walk away from it and resigned myself to just looking at honeymoon photos of me holding it when this very nice guy went on his hands and knees and risked his neck to retrieve my umbrella using his own. I pleaded for him to just leave it but he still tried and succeeded. I couldn't thank him enough and it made me a believe in the goodness of people. Remembering the guy's heroics makes me forget about how angry I was at the nutcase today.

Things happen for a reason and I found a reason to be actually thankful for being spat on. After I put Bubby to sleep I decided to blow dry and straighten my hair for the second time today and I discovered that I left my straightener on from when I used it this morning. I wash my hair every second day which means I wouldn't have washed it again until Saturday and I don't normally blow dry or straighten it unless I'm going out. If I wasn't forced to wash my hair it would have been days before I discovered that the straightener was left on and goodness knows what could have happened. If I really wanted to be philosophical about it then I would say one person's lunacy leads to another person's serendipity. I still much prefer to have been shat on the head by bird though.

Since long posts are boring without photos here are some photos featuring my honeymoon umbrella and shameless showing off of travel photos.