Sad, And Yet So Funny

Ok, so this is a true story. I sometimes can't believe it myself, but I swear to God this really happened to me. I was working in my chocolate shop and it was near the end of the day. There were a couple of customers on the other side of the store and I wasn’t paying them any attention at the moment. I had begun to stock the Maggie Lyon truffles.

As I was putting chocolates from the boxes to the case, I hear J.P. ask “Do you need any help with anything?” For an answer I hear a woman say back, “What, you think I’m stealing?” I thought it was somebody J.P. knew or something, just somebody joking around. The woman continues,

“What you think ‘cause of the color of my skin, I’m stealing? Is that what you think!?” By now, of course, the volume of the voice had risen, but I still thought it was maybe somebody he knew.

J.P. tries to answer back, saying that he was just trying to help, but can’t get a sentence out. The woman overrides him, shouting, “You a racist! You think I’m trying to steal chocolate because I’m black. Racist!” At this point, I’m pretty sure the woman is not somebody anybody knows. She continues to yell at J.P. calling him a racist and accusing him of saying she was stealing.

Now, if I was in J.P.’s place at this point, I would have run away as soon as the woman called me a racist, despite the fact that I have some proof that I have nothing against black people. (By the way, I know Andrea, at least, hates the term African American, saying that she has nothing to do with Africa). J.P., however is not somebody that’s gonna back down very easily. Not that he’s a mean guy or anything, in fact I like him a lot. He’s just the kind of guy that doesn’t mind speaking his mind and does mind backing down.

So he, beginning to get angry himself, begins to talk back to the crazy woman yelling at him. “Whoa! I never said you were stealing! I was just asking if you needed help with anything.”

Writing this conversation won’t quite give you the idea, but while J.P. was trying to explain himself, the woman just continued to call him a racist. As she continued, J.P. said, “well, I guess you don’t need any help, maybe I can ask him (indicating the woman’s 14-15 year old son). Can I help you get anything?” Here, I looked at my co-worker Scott, and we both had to try to not laugh out loud. The whole situation was just completely ridiculous.

“Hey, don’t you talk to him that way! You don’t need to be talking to my son, you racist! He’s fine, he doesn’t need any help from racists.”

“Ok, fine then, is there anything else I can do for you?”

“You better shut your mouth, you fucking racist!”

During this display, all of my co-workers had been doing our best to both keep in our laughter, particularly at J.P.’s remarks, and to ignore the entire thing. I was still just going through those boxes of Maggie’s. Again, writing this surreal experience down doesn’t really do it justice. The two continued to yell for a while, just trading “racist,” and “what are you talking about,” back and forth. Eventually, the woman took it another step,

“Ok then, you damn racist, you gay queer! You faggot…”

“Whaaat?!?”

“You gay! Why don’t you go wash you’re jeans, you queer!”

Now, the owner of For the Love of Chocolate is gay, and at least half of my co-workers are gay. The ironic thing is that J.P. is one of the few straight ones. So nobody’s really sure where she got the idea he was gay. Maybe she just assumed we are all gay-not really sure. We also have pondered and pondered what she meant by “Go wash your jeans.” We came to no conclusions. Anybody else got any ideas dirty jeans have to do with being homosexual?

In any case, J.P. continued to express his confusion, while the woman continued to call him a racist homosexual. Up until then, there had been no name-calling (except racist of course), so J.P. decided to try and slowly extract himself from the situation – though he was still mad, so he didn’t try that hard. Basically, he said,

“I don’t know where you got that…

“Shut up, you racist…

“When did we get to name calling?”

“Fucking queer”

“Look, I’m not about to ring you up so…”

“That’s right you ‘ain’t ringing me up! Get out my face! Get out my face!” (At this shout, the woman made a hilarious gesture which I can’t really explain. She acted like she was grabbing something from in front of her face and throwing towards J.P. We still do it to each other every day at work)

J.P. started to walk back behind the counter, still arguing away. The woman, however, had moved on from the homosexual accusations and had moved back to the “I’m not stealing” thing.

“Man, we ‘ain’t gotta steal shit! My son (indicating the young guy again) don’t need to steal! He’s gonna be in the NFL! He’s gonna be making millions of dollars, he doesn’t need to steal from you!”

“Oh, good, good.”

“He’s gonna be in the NFL, he’s gonna be on TV! You’re gonna be watching him on TV! He’s…

“Good, I got Comcast.”

“… gonna be in the NFL! He’s gonna be rich. He doesn’t…”

“I got HD TV.”

“need to steal ! You racist queer!”

Ok, this story is pretty funny, but it’s pretty sad too. It’s pitiful that the woman is going to assume somebody is a racist because they ask if they can help her. But the really sad part was her son. You could tell he was really embarrassed and ashamed. He kept his head down and didn’t look up the whole time. He couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over. By this time, the argument had stretched for about 10 minutes.

One other funny little tidbit is that the little shopping strip the store is in has a security guard. Somewhere around this time in the match between J.P. and the customer, the security guard looked in the window, then walked right on by. Now I think the guy probably just didn’t see anything to rouse his suspicions, but my other co-workers think he just didn’t want to deal with it. They also think the security guard is kinda slow anyway – nobody thinks very highly of him. In any case, back to the fun.

Now is the worst part of the dispute, because neither of them was ready to back down. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but sometime, the woman shouted,

“If you don’t shut the hell up, you’re gonna get some spit in your face! You better shut up.” J.P. didn’t shut up. “I’m gonna spit all over you, you asshole, you damn…”

As she threatened to spit on J.P. our manager, E.J. (I know, another initial name, sorry if its confusing), began to ring the woman up. Now, as I think about it afterward, of course I’d say he shouldn’t have rung her up at all, just kicked her out – especially as E.J. is gay and probably didn’t like hearing the woman call anyone a faggot or a gay queer. However, if it had been me, I probably would have just done the same thing – the quicker we could get her out the door the better. Anyway, she continued to threaten and J.P. continued to goad her.

“I’ll spit all over you, you…”

“Ok, whatever, I was just asking if you needed any help…”

“Shut the hell up you racist! You blue-eyed devil! You must want some spit right in your face, you blue-eyed devil racist!”

“Sure, I’m a racist, sorry for just trying to help…”

Again, I’m not quite sure what a blue-eyed devil is. Something about slavery and white people being slave owners I assume. And again, the ironic thing about this insult is that J.P. is actually Puerto Rican. He may not look as Latino as some, but he definitely not white, let alone having blue eyes. He might be a devil – I can’t argue against that one I guess. So anyway, the woman called J.P. gay and white, both of which he is not, both of which he is in the minority at our store. Kinda funny. Ok, faithful readers, we almost done now, this dispute does have an end.

“You blue-eyed devil, I’ll spit right in your face…”

“Ok, whatever…”

Here, the lady actually made a lunge, as if she meant to jump over the counter and do as she threatened, but her son held her back. That’s right, her 14-15 year old son held back his own mom to keep her from spitting in a strangers face.

Ok, and we’re done, she yelled and complained and even said she’d “shop here as often as she feels like it” (though we’ve never seen her back, thankfully). Finally she walked out the door. As soon as she left, a roar of laughter and a final release of tension filled the store.

What a crazy lady. I don’t believe we talked about anything else for two days in FLC. What a crazy lady. The whole thing was like something out of a movie. I still can’t believe it really happened. To me, J.P. will always be the Blue-eyed Devil. Or perhaps the gay queer. And I tell him to wash his jeans every day.