life, the universe, and donna

I’m not a fan of the “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” motto, because then I’d never be able to talk. What? Sometimes I’m nasty, and I’m okay with that. But holy crap, I encountered possibly the most horrid person on the planet today.

So I was on the bus on my way to work, and apparently one or two in front of it never showed. I must have timed it well, since I didn’t have to wait long, but when the bus got to Hastings & Nanaimo there was a hell of a crowd, including several seniors and two strollers (one of the stroller moms also had a baby strapped to her.) A woman about 60ish hopped on first and immediately claimed one of the courtesy seats. When she was asked to move so that the two strollers and army of seniors could get a seat, she refused. Huh. Well, rude, but whatever. I was closer to the back of the bus, but ended up giving up my seat to an ancient woman who had to be about 94. Or 904. Hard to tell.

Then, Horrid Woman starts ranting about not giving up her seat, and unfortunately, some other riders decided to engage her about it. Including one of the women with a stroller. I couldn’t actually see said woman very well as the bus was fairly crowded, but she seemed fairly average-sized to me… which is only slightly relevant, but just adds to the plain absurdity of the situation: Horrid Woman started bitching at the girl about her weight, and how sad it is to see young girls who “can’t take care of themselves.”

“I just had a baby!” she said.
Horrid woman shot back, “In your legs?”

…what. the. fuck?

At this point, a few other bus patrons (including me) piped up and shut Horrid Woman down. Not that that stopped her — before she got off (a whopping 5 stops later) she had told the young mother that she was going to have a coronary by the time she was 40, had “proudly” claimed that she wouldn’t give up her seat because when SHE was raising her children, SHE never needed a special seat (yeah? How about for the army of seniors you denied, too? I guess when you’re old, you won’t need a special seat either.) and one stroller & parent shouldn’t be allowed to take up three seats. (Why not? There were three people there. Sure, two of them were infants, but so what? The woman with a stroller & the baby strapped on never did get a seat — she just kind of wedged herself in next to her stroller.) She also told the supposedly overweight woman that she should walk more — classy, coming from the (not entirely svelte herself) woman who took the bus for a whole 5 stops.

A few other people on the bus had apparently encountered her before. “She’s always like this” — including the ancient old woman I gave my seat up to. I’d have just treated her like any internet troll and left it alone, except she was railing on this poor girl (admittedly, said poor girl was doing a find job of defending herself) and that’s just not cool.

Luckily, she got off fast, and pretty much the entire bus agreed that it was good riddance.

Seriously, what makes people think it’s okay to treat other people like that? I can only hope she’s mentally ill so at least she has SOME excuse for being a hosebeast.