Mr. Grammar versus Like, Yoga Chickie

So, last night I stopped by CVS to pick up a prescription. Unfortunately, it was not waiting for me as I thought it would be.

"When was your doctor supposed to have called it in?" the cashier asked me.

"Hmmm," I thought for a moment, "It wasn't today, so, it had to have been like yesterday," I answered.

"Not 'LIKE' yesterday," said a male voice from behind me.

I smiled. Cute, I thought. Correcting my grammar. OK, fine, I figured, how about if I turn around and correct him, correcting me? I turned around and saw a middle-aged man in a well-tailored suit. His skin was tan in that "I've just been to the Carribean" sort of way. His eyes were shining amiably. Still smiling, I answered him: "Actually, I believe it was 'LIKE' yesterday, since by 'like' I meant, 'approximately', as in, I don't know if it was, in fact, yesterday, or if it might have been the day before."

But instead of the bantering response I was expecting, what I got was a snarl and a further correction: "No," he said, not even cracking a smile, "you mean "yesterday'. There's no such thing as 'LIKE' yesterday. It's either yesterday or it's not. Which is it, because it's not LIKE."

My eyebrows went up so high, I am still trying to pull them down from my hairline. However, I decided it was best not to get into any sort of confrontation, and so I quietly turned away and smiled at the cashier. "So, anyway," I continued, "Let's figure out what happened to my pills."

But apparently, Mr. Grammar wasn't finished with me. "Like," he muttered haughtily, "Like, yesterday! LIKE!" his voice growing louder. I turned around to see whom it was he was addressing. It was a woman, rolling her eyes away from him. I looked at him carefully, trying to understand what the hell was going on. It seemed inconceivable to me that someone I had never met could regard me with such hostility. Maybe he was only kidding but having a hard time getting that across...? I quickly assessed the situation and decided, no, he was definitely NOT kidding.

I turned around once again to continue dealing with the cashier only to hear Mr. Grammar snarking, "It's like, you know, yesterday!" I told myself to get a grip, to stay calm, to ignore him. But by now the cashier was rolling HER eyes, a show of solidarity which, sadly, rather than calming me, only served to agitate me and to question why I felt a duty to stand there quietly, allowing myself to be mocked by some suit-wearing stranger who seemed to think he was in a position to condemn my manner of speaking.

At the point where I was biting my tongue so hard, it was practically bleeding, I finally decided to do the anti-Yoga Chickie thing and stand up to the bully. "Like," I said, turning around to face him, "I like don't like appreciate like your like making fun of me, LIKE! So like SHUT UP you asshole. LIKE."

My heart was pounding. I felt clammy, whipped-up, out-of-control. I paid for a magazine and got the hell out of there. The entire walk home the scene played out in my head, over and over again, sometimes in real time, sometimes in slomo. I wanted to wash the experience off of me. I wanted to talk about it to someone who would high-five me and tell me that I had done the right thing.

But the truth is, I didn't. Mr. Grammar may have been crass and hostile and offensive. But I became his victim only when I allowed him to whip me up into a violent frenzy. Besides, as my mom pointed out when I relayed the story to her: who knows whether Mr. Grammar was simply waiting for an excuse to pull the gun out of his pocket and open fire?

YC