So Jen enters these writing contests where bloggers are asked to write on a particular theme and the theme for one of these contests this month is to write about the cruelest or meanest thing you’ve ever done. I’ll admit to being a confessional writer, but this topic seems to cross a line such that most of us would plead the fifth or seek smarmy absolution for our sins.

I’m sure I have been mean to my siblings in our childhood competitions. I once bit a chunk out of my brother Andy’s arm when we were wrestling. I know that I have been cruel in breakups, more in what I’ve said than what I’ve done. That cruelty is balanced with the counter cruelties necessary to the ego when a “we” dissolves into its constituent egos, or at least that’s a convenient rationalization for the drama and pain when friendships, romantic or otherwise, come to an end. In other words I’ve heard as many mean things as I’ve said in those final tennis matches of “you suck and here’s why”.

I don’t really have a Finneous moment where I intentionally jangled a limb and sent anyone to their gradual death as in A Separate Peace. In my internalized guilt and self-doubt I have probably been cruelest to myself, though I could name a few former friends who I am sure would argue with that. I can be a grudge holder. It takes quite a lot to piss me off, but when I get to the point that I am done with someone, I am done with them 110%. Perhaps I have been cruelest in these severings, where I engage in pharaoh like hard heartedness and my worst action is inaction and non-communication.

My first thought when I read the prompt was to write with stylized verbosity about a moment of casual retribution for a real or imagined slight on a par with Swift’s Rape of The Lock. My story for this cruelty is both comic and short.

In high school we were lucky enough to have an open campus such that on our free or lunch hours we could simply drive away. It was our custom during our junior and senior years to go out for lunch to places like Burger King, The Posh Nosh, various places in the Galleria Mall food court, or occasionally Carl’s Drive in on Manchester. Carl’s is famous for the homemade root beer and thin sliced steak sandwiches. They serve bar style from a central island surrounded by stools with an old time jukebox in the corner. If you were a classic car enthusiast you might cruise Carl’s on a Saturday to show off the shiny fins on your convertible Cadillac.

Saul Davidson and I were in a hurry to get served and get back to our classes. We had called in an order to be sure that the round trip to this outer circle locale in the bisected radius of available roundtrip food would not impede our digestion or attendance records, but we discovered to our chagrin that on this Day Carl’s was woefully understaffed.

Having worked in food service myself I can appreciate those difficult times when, through no fault of your own, you become backed up on a run of orders. My advice to all servers is to don the hat of graciousness and with apologetics do the best that you can. This sublimity of nature is unfortunately not always granted to those under stress and when push comes to shove the feelings of innocents may be tread upon. Such was our fate, we were made to wait and people who had ordered after us were served first. We were also snapped at with unkind rejoinders such that we would be served in whatever damn well order pleased this minor lord of limited fiefdom. We did not leave. We wanted our food. It was prepared in front of us on a bar backed grill.

A person confrontational in personality might verbally abuse their abuser, but that day I was possessed by a beatific vision of the Buddha as I awaited my long time in coming pulverized with a meat mallet pseudo steak sandwich and froth-full float. My gaze wandered to the jukebox and I discovered that musical bargains aplenty were to be had as part of the ethos of a fifties style drive up. Two songs could be chosen for each quarter submitted and after a brief counting of change Saul and I discovered that we had five dollars between us in the coinage of the realm.


At last our food was ready in white sacks and polystyrene cups. Having safely taken possession of our culinary goods we deposited our eagle-etched disks in quick succession and for our forty musical selections we repeatedly chose Van Halen’s rock anthem Jump knowing full well that our busy little beaver of un-solicitous service would have to suffer through at least ten of them before he leapt the counter and kicked out the plug. As David Lee Roth began the first discordant yelp of his repeated vague admonition to briefly defy gravity and Eddie Van Halen’s whammy bar began to whammy in earnest, we took our leave of Carl’s, never to return. Alas we were not cruel to be kind, but to give in kind a discomfort of mood to our server who was rude.