Oh, you mean me yesterday? It's a story (as everything I tend to overtell IS).
I was at a truck stop with Mom and my aunt yesterday eating breakfast, when at the next table sits down this middle-aged guy, what looked like his brother (or at least a well-resembling relative), a couple of older women and a little girl. Well, the guy is one of those loud, bossy types, dominating the table's conversation (hard not to notice just one table over).
At one point, Mom made some point about Obama and Hillary and as she made the mistake of saying it above a whisper, the guy at the next table figured he could invite himself to our conversation and start commenting away (which ... I'm pushy online, but in RL I don't butt into conversations with people I don't know). Now Mom isn't a dumb person, but she's not good at confrontation, and won't get into a screaming argument with someone - especially since she's always pretty much voted Republican and it's just the last few years she's gotten disgusted with them, so she's still on sort-of-shaky ground argument-wise for the other side. Well, she made some comment about not wanting to vote for another oilman for the White House, since it's bad for the country, and the guy says something like "prove how Bush is making money off this." As a few more comments were exchanged, it was clear Mom was trying not to argue and that the guy was equally, smugly adamant that she "prove" it.
I couldn't handle it. "I can prove it," I said, proceeding to remind him how Cheney has benefited through Halliburton and its companies from no-bid government contracts for BILLIONS, how the Bush family has had relationships with Middle East oil tycoons for decades, etc.
We then went back and forth through several other things. Eventually he comes back to the "Obama is friends with Muslim terrorists" argument - at which point I asked, "Can you prove it?"
"It's been in the news." (I shudder to think which "news" channel HE listens to.)
"Can you prove it?" I continued.
Finally, he asked me how I knew so much, at which point I informed him I've been a reporter for a long time and I tend to be able to pull proof to back up my assertions. (The funniest part was when his brother, quiet up to this point, started laughing his ass off - as we saw a little later on, apparently he and the two women didn't agree so much with the loud guy - who turned out to be a trucker - but didn't say much against him.)
Why I say I "won" the argument is that eventually, the trucker says, half-jokingly, "If you're not careful, I'm going to get on the radio and get a bunch of truckers in here to back me up." :-)
(As a footnote: Immediately after he said that, my aunt turned to him and said, "Oh, I wouldn't if I were you. It wouldn't be a fair fight, those poor guys.")
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I was at a truck stop with Mom and my aunt yesterday eating breakfast, when at the next table sits down this middle-aged guy, what looked like his brother (or at least a well-resembling relative), a couple of older women and a little girl. Well, the guy is one of those loud, bossy types, dominating the table's conversation (hard not to notice just one table over).
At one point, Mom made some point about Obama and Hillary and as she made the mistake of saying it above a whisper, the guy at the next table figured he could invite himself to our conversation and start commenting away (which ... I'm pushy online, but in RL I don't butt into conversations with people I don't know). Now Mom isn't a dumb person, but she's not good at confrontation, and won't get into a screaming argument with someone - especially since she's always pretty much voted Republican and it's just the last few years she's gotten disgusted with them, so she's still on sort-of-shaky ground argument-wise for the other side. Well, she made some comment about not wanting to vote for another oilman for the White House, since it's bad for the country, and the guy says something like "prove how Bush is making money off this." As a few more comments were exchanged, it was clear Mom was trying not to argue and that the guy was equally, smugly adamant that she "prove" it.
I couldn't handle it. "I can prove it," I said, proceeding to remind him how Cheney has benefited through Halliburton and its companies from no-bid government contracts for BILLIONS, how the Bush family has had relationships with Middle East oil tycoons for decades, etc.
We then went back and forth through several other things. Eventually he comes back to the "Obama is friends with Muslim terrorists" argument - at which point I asked, "Can you prove it?"
"It's been in the news." (I shudder to think which "news" channel HE listens to.)
"Can you prove it?" I continued.
Finally, he asked me how I knew so much, at which point I informed him I've been a reporter for a long time and I tend to be able to pull proof to back up my assertions. (The funniest part was when his brother, quiet up to this point, started laughing his ass off - as we saw a little later on, apparently he and the two women didn't agree so much with the loud guy - who turned out to be a trucker - but didn't say much against him.)
Why I say I "won" the argument is that eventually, the trucker says, half-jokingly, "If you're not careful, I'm going to get on the radio and get a bunch of truckers in here to back me up." :-)
(As a footnote: Immediately after he said that, my aunt turned to him and said, "Oh, I wouldn't if I were you. It wouldn't be a fair fight, those poor guys.")
/ROFLing ....