The Gas Station Jerk

This morning I’d like to explore getting my feelings hurt over silly things. The first little story is about my cat, and it may seem unrelated to the story of the gas-station-jerk, but my emotional fall out from each is tethered to the same starting point.

Nala is our fifteen year old cat that we adopted from the SPCA about a week or two after we returned from our honeymoon. After doing a few puzzles in our tiny one bedroom apartment in the evenings, we were both a little bored. As I was in graduate school and tended to work in the field and out of home rather than in the school office space provided, I was a little lonely. So we got a kitten. Fast forward fifteen years and a a whole lot of new humans and creatures later, Nala is still my main girl, but she’s finally showing her age. This past year her weight was down, and several teeth had to be pulled. However, she’s still got spunk and tons of sweetness to give. Our other cat, June, is an absolute beast both in demeanor and size and will eat all the food, so I’ve been letting June out back in the morning and then giving Nala her soft food to make sure she gets a chance to eat.

 

Well this morning I let June out back and turned to finish making my coffee. Sometimes I’ll give Nala a spot of half and half, and she’s a smart kitty, so as she saw me open the fridge, she started meowing loudly. It wasn’t the sweet little mew of a tender young kitten, it was a loud, gravely yowl of an old kitty who sounds like she’s been chain smoking a pack a day.

 

Y’all, it hurt my feelings.

 

What?!

 

I know. It’s a cat asking for milk.

 

But she wasn’t asking. She was demanding her right to milk, and she was demanding it of me.

 

I, her lifelong human companion, wanted to be acknowledged for my kind benevolence of a special morning treat in the safety of having kicked out her aggressor to the back yard. I wanted purrs and sweet rubs against my leg, but what I got was an old hag of a kitty yelling at me to “Speed it up!”

 

It rubbed me the wrong way because this is the story of parenthood. For years we have tiny humans demanding what they need or want while not giving a damn about anything anyone else needs or wants. Then we have tweens whining about all the things they want and rejecting all the things you know they need. I’ve been in the throws of this struggle as I suspect you have too.

 

Honestly, it makes complete sense why my cat hurt my feelings. Actually she didn’t hurt them. They were already hurt. I am already an exhausted warrior who has been fighting the long battle of providing for needs and wants and sometimes being seen as an aggressor or a holding-it-backer.

 

…

 

I pulled into the Costco gas line after stopping at Target to let the boys spend their money and pick up a gallon of ice-cream, and there were two cars at the pump and one in front of me waiting. As the back pumper pulled out, the old man in front of me pulled up. As he got out, the guy in front of him, a young bearded, early career man in his late twenties or early thirties, slowly got out of his car and stood talking on his phone as his gesticulated with his free hand. He had apparently been sitting in his car rather than pumping gas the whole time that the original car behind him had been pumping gas.

 

Every single step of the process of his pumping gas — taking the wallet out of his pocket but realizing it was still on his driver seat, pulling the card out of the wallet, sliding the card, opening the gas gap, putting in the nozzle, selecting the grade, starting the pump, putting up the nozzle, closing the cap — EVERY SINGLE STEP — was broken up with loud but super chill looking gesticulating conversation on his phone. The old man behind him was back in his car and saw that hand-talker was finishing up, so he waited to pull out. Anyhow, he couldn’t pull out because the pompous-jerkface-phone-talker was standing beside his car with his door open.

 

At this point my blood was far past boiling. Were I not chained by all the burdens of human decency, I would have laid on the horn, got out of my car, snatched his phone and ground it into the pavement with my heel. Alas, the old man honked and eventually we all drove forward.

 

Meanwhile, I had already popped open my own gas flap, pulled out my credit card and was ready to do my job and get out of the way. I pumped gas with the precision of the Roman army and a fire burning in my belly of William Wallace. As we drove out of the Coscto parking lot, I had my boys all whipped up in mutual feelings of steely judgment towards people who believe no one else’s time is as important as their own. Oh how those people are just so unjust, so arrogant, so unkind and inconsiderate. I on the other hand was prepared and ready to pump gas so as to not take any more time than needed to complete the task so that I didn’t waste other people’s time.

 

And then, out came the raging mama detailing the most recent escapades of how the boys had been inconsiderate of my time (and actually the extended family’s time) and my labor for them.

 

“Do you know what will happen if you continue to disregard your parents and only think about yourself? Do you??? You will grow up to be the gas-station-jerk.”

 

For real, one of my biggest fears is that I will send forth entitled people in the world. Was I right in being angry at the gas-station-guy? Of course I was. Was it a teachable moment? Of course it was. Should I call out my kids over entitlement? Of course I should. Was if over the top to be insulted by the cat? Of course it was.

 

As we drove on, I silently toyed with the reasons the guy might have been distracted by his phone call. I mean to me it looked like he just wanted to just enjoy talking rather than pump, but maybe he was getting laid off. Maybe his had just lost a parent or gotten a bad diagnoses. I mean he didn’t look distraught, but I sure hope he had a good, terrible reason to treat all of us like pieces of crap.

 

Yet my blood was still boiling. It was boiling because of … wait for it… my own entitlement.

 

There I said it.

 

I feel entitled to other people’s consideration and gratitude. It’s not that I’m not worthy of those, but I feel entitled, and thus I eventually get really pissed off when I’m sitting in that unmitigated feeling day after day.

 

My blood also boiled because of my own pride. I am considerate. I am thankful. However, I am always evaluating how my actions are inconveniencing others and comparing it to the behavior of others. I can even think of an incident from second grade where I silently judged a friend for letting a Sunday school teacher buy her a special treat on an outing to Rock City. I still remember that because I was so embarrassed for her.

 

I judge my husband every time we all walk through the sliding doors at Target and he stays in the middle instead of scooting to the right to allow other people to pass in the other direction.

 

 

As I peel back the layers of my own “righteous anger”, what I find is a very unrighteous spirit. I find a soul that tends to make itself judge and jury.

 

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,  not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”  Philippians 2: 2-4

 

This verse is always on my heart, but I struggle to apply it in fullness. I may follow the action, but I sidestep the source. I wear the wrong lens. I’m not rooted in the encouragement and comfort of being united in Christ or reveling in the joy or steeped in humility. I try to transplant the actions rather than growing from seed the healthy attitudes.