Stung by the peppery taste of prejudice in nation’s capitol

I have already discussed the joys of being a brown man in this wonderful nation; I am… I have already discussed the joys of being a brown man in this wonderful nation; I am therefore obligated to present the other side of the coin, which will be in the form of an anecdote that took place this summer as I was walking from the Metro station in Washington, D.C., to my job.

Let me continue to preface my misadventure with some background info:

I wear a suit and tie to work every day — although usually, I add trousers. I walk across the Key Bridge into Georgetown every day. Running through Georgetown is a canal that was only really used back in the day but still exists; the paths along the canal are popular walking/running trails, and one of them is the path I take to get to work.

So, I was walking out of the Metro station at Rosslyn, where I get off of the blue line every morning, and I stopped at a nearby convenience store to get a bottle of water because it was a rather hot day. As I went to pay for the water — $2.05 for Deer Park. Dammit, Georgetown! — I accidentally bumped into this old-ish Caucasian woman who looked pretty creepy and weird. I am going to pretend her name is Mildred.

Anyway, Mildred and I left the store at more or less the same time, and we both started to walk towards the Key Bridge. She was in front of me and had a weird gait that was slow, but not slow enough to force me to awkwardly pass her. And since I like to avoid awkwardness and being near weird people — Carrie Shafer excluded — I took it like a champ and walked the entire Key Bridge behind this woman.

I never quite saw her face, but she kept glancing furtively back at me every five minutes or so. I thought nothing of it because I am ruggedly handsome and was wearing nice clothes, so anyone without a Y-chromosome would be looking at me — or something.

Just as she entered a brief stretch of pathway surrounded by trees, bushes and flowers, with me still behind her, a wasp — not a W.A.S.P. — darted out in front of me. Because of my catlike reflexes and blinding reaction time, I avoided certain death/momentary pain by stepping deftly aside and in Mildred’s direction at the exact moment that she turned her head toward me.

So I assume all she saw was a charging minority, and she began jogging away, fumbling for something in her gigantic purse. I figured she was going after her cell phone to call the cops, so I rushed over to her to tell her that I am not dangerous and that I saw a wasp — or something — in order to calm her down.

As I got within an arm’s length of her, I called out, “sorry” to her. I reached out to touch her shoulder to get her to stop running. As I did this, she turned around, startled, with what I thought was her cell phone, but looked oddly small and cylindrical.

By time I started to get the hell out of the way — I think I ducked and darted left — she sprayed an excessive amount of pepper spray at me.

And she would have hit me in the face with it, but thanks to whatever it was — incompetence, her fumbling rush for it or a “Pulp Fiction”-style — the nozzle was pointed to the side and the spray went off in the opposite direction.

I gently screamed something like, “What the hell are you doing!”

To which I got, “Get away from me!”

“OK, lady, I’m just going to work. Chill the [edited for content] out!”

Mildred backed away saying, “Is part of your work robbing me?”

“What the hell are you talking about? I work at Wisconsin ‘ K; what is wrong with you? I dashed toward you because there was a wasp behind me. Damn.”

“Oh … I’m sorry then,” she said, obviously not believing me.

“Whatever; step aside or I’m calling the police,” I managed to say without continuing to scream, still shaken from my near-blinding.

She stepped aside. I walked by and onto the path toward my job. I didn’t look back, but I assumed she went the other way because when I stepped off the path and toward my building, she wasn’t there.

I’ve recounted the dialogue as best I can, but I can’t remember it exactly, because it was all right after I was almost reduced to a whimpering bulk.

Also, I really wanted to call her an amalgam of assorted vulgarities, and I am proud that I refrained. I am not sure what percent of this tale is a result of my brownness or the fact that this woman was unbalanced, but I figure this should be fair warning to everyone out there: If they start running, let them run.

You are all lucky. Arun Butcher barely survived last Tuesday, e-mail him at amb28@pitt.edu.