Evil People

I firmly believe that there are some people in this world that are just no damn good. Part of this is personal experience. Part of this is professional experience. And part of it is just plain old contrariness and a lack of confidence in the general goodness of humanity.

Okay, so I'm a Grinch. Deal with it.

Red's 10-yr-old has had a friend since we moved in here, about 4 years ago. They lived just down the street, and up until this morning, they were utterly inseparable - twins, if you will, from different mothers, but as alike as any two little girls can be. Last night, Little Blond Friend's older brother ran away from home, after he called his mother something highly inappropriate to her face and was facing a well-deserved whuppin' across the ass from his dad. In their search for him, Little Blond Friend's dad came past our place to get LBF, and he was reeking of alcohol, enough so that the other friends we adults had visiting commented on the odor from nearly 20 feet away inside the house (he never came in) after he left. I spoke with LBF's mom this morning and commented on it, saying that perhaps Dad really shouldn't have been driving, and that I'd had some reservations about allowing his daughter to go with him in that condition.

Big mistake. Of sorts. She went, if I can use the term (and why not, it's my blog dammit) absolutely batshit crazy. Off the deep end. Ca-waaaazy. How dare I say that her husband would drive drunk with his daughter in the car, blah blah blah. Okay, he nearly fell down our stairs and I could smell him before I opened the door....but oh no. Anyway.

So a while later, he calls me. Now, mind you, other than the two or three breif times I've encountered the guy, and the one time Red and I made the mistake of going out for a quiet drink (or a dozen) with these two in which much hilarity did not ensue, I've hardly ever spoken with the guy. He calls me all indignant and telling me I'm not allowed to say anything to anybody, I'm way out of line calling him a drunk, etc etc ad nauseum. I told him....once....that if the only reason he'd bothered dialing my number was to get in an arguement with me, that I wasn't interested - he had obviously been drinking the night before, I noticed it, and commented on it to the other adult in the equation. That was it. I told him if he wanted to fight to save his breath.

Next words out of his mouth, "Well, no, I wasn't calling to fight with you, but I just want to let you know you'd better not say anything like that about me again, or I'll..." -=click=-

Shortly thereafter, the other adult calls and screams at my pregnant fiancee. Not a recipe for success.

Then they send over LBF, who, mind you, is all of about 12, and other than our 10-yr-old, has no friends. None. Nada. Zip. The message? "My dad says I can't be friends with you anymore, because WG was so rude to him." Red, who happened to be in earshot, corrected LBF quickly on this, giving her The Facts that she obviously hadn't gotten from her parental units, and the kid went hollering back to the car that Red said her dad was a drunk driver.

Well....yeah, actually.

So the upshot of the day was that I had a sobbing 10-yr-old girl in my lap, unable to understand why a man in his late thirties would choose to have a temper tantrum and take it out on his daughter and herself. I hope I explained it okay...at any rate, she did stop crying eventually.

The moral of the story here, I guess, is that people just suck. :(

Edit: Apparently Jeff has encountered the same phenomenon. Proof!