Something about the Christmas season makes people crazy. And sometimes it makes them mean. Which is why I prefer to avoid people at Christmas.
For example, I know better than to go to the stores or malls during Christmas season, but today I wanted a pizza. So, knowing better, I drove to Walmart to buy one of their deli pizzas. As I turned into the parking lot, there was a white car stopped at a stop sign in a lane to my left, a lane I intended to enter. Behind the white car was a black SUV. I turned left into the lane the white car was in, but then I had to stop because the black SUV was blocking part of the lane and I couldn’t proceed.
The driver of the white car was a white woman with a passel of young kids. The woman jumped out of her car and came over to mine, screaming her words at me. “Didn’t you see the stop sign?! I almost hit you! You drove right through it! What is wrong with you!” Then she jumped back into her car. I looked back at her car, wondering what she was talking about, as I had not encountered any stop sign. I’ve driven that route into the parking lot a hundred times and there has never been a stop sign on my lane. The furious woman had the stop sign, not me. Her kids looked my way, frowns of disapproval on their faces.
The woman drove off and the black SUV pulled up beside me and stopped. The driver was a middle-aged black woman. She looked at me and said, “You see how some people are? But don’t let her take your glory.” And she drove away.
If that first woman had had a gun, she might have shot me, she was that angry. All because she thought I had driven through a stop sign that existed only in her head.
But I think the second woman’s advice was sound – for this Christmas season, and all times of the year. Never let the other person take your glory.
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