A holly, jolly, bitchy Xmas, to you

So, I was at Border's today, giving myself a nice little present of some books for the holiday. Very traditional for me. If you ever need to get me a gift and don't know what to choose, get me a gift cert at any bookstore. Anyway, I'm trying to find one more book, just to take me over the credit left on my gift cards, so that I have two less pieces of plastic in my wallet. Good excuse, no? I'm sitting in the aisle browsing the Japanese cooking books. Whenever someone comes by to browse, I would tell them to "let me know if I am in your way," since I am blocking part fo the shelf, because my parents raised me to be ultra-polite, or at least regular-polite. Only two people came by, and I got into one book, not noticing how long I was sitting there for. Could've been ten minutes, coulda been 30, I don't know. You know how you can get when your attention gets caught by something, and I wasn't in a main pathway, or so I thought.

So, imagine my surprise and flabbergastment when this, this...woman pushes by me, saying loudly that she thinks that I have spent enough time blocking the aisle and that I should go somewhere else if I was going to read the books. She also said some other things that I don't remember (likely because they dribbled out from my ears and through my dropped jaw), and went to stand by the water fountains at the end of the row (which were more easily reached by going around my section anyway, so that wouldn't be a good enough reason to get mad), face to the corner, practically shaking with her rage. She mumbled a few other things to the wall, apparently thinking that it could solve the situation. Psycho bitch. A man who was walking past glanced back (and down) at me, smiled and rolled his eyes.

I mean, I was trying to be considerate, letting people know that I am aware that I am potentially in the way and totally willing to move, but I am browsing the bottom shelf. In a bookstore. Where browsing is socially acceptable. Many smooth comebacks went through my mind, but all I could think of was to get out of the crazy-woman's line of fire, and I got out of the store as quickly as I could, scanning the customers for her. Gah. And the main thing that keeps running through my mind is if she had the balls/ovaries to make a scene, why couldn't she use her fortitude to simply ask me to move? Too much holiday shopping? I'm lucky she didn't have an uzi under her winter coat. Oh well, I made it home, and I have all my ingredients to cook a turkey for dinner tomorrow.

Hope she gets eggnog poisoning.