Not too long ago, in a blog I had done about traveling back to Amsterdam on a train and seeing a passenger who wouldn’t move all her junk out of the aisle, I wrote “I guess there are jerks everywhere.” After writing such a thing, I felt fortunate that in our tiny village, I don’t often run into jerks, but I did, last night.
Tuesday is our jam night and we gather in the train station lobby to play music. I had loaded up all of our music stands, song books, guitar, and mandolin into the back of the car. I picked up a neighbor who I goes with me to the jam, and we headed to the train station.
When we got to the station, everything seemed normal. I unlocked the door, when in to dismantle the alarm, but was surprised to see that the alarm had never been set, so I wondered if someone else was in the building, I called out, “Hello?”
The train station has been under renovations for months now. The job was supposed to have been completed by the end of December, but it has been slowly dragging on. After two months and a half of being unable to use the station, and having our jam at a member’s house, we were finally able to do our last two sessions back at the station, even though the renovation hadn’t been completed.
After my “Hello, a angry, rude, man came shooting out of the men’s washroom, where I guess he was working on the floor. His table saw and other tools were right inside the station front door. I explained that we were going to play music in the lobby, and the jerk, in a very antagonistic way said, no we couldn’t; this was a construction site and we had to leave. After some back and fourths, where he told me, “I don’t like you.” and I replied, “ I don’t like you either,” I saw that playing in the lobby was not going to work, and told the guy, “ Okay, we will leave.”
The jerk, who was still angry, and wanted more confrontation, followed us outside and as we stood in the rain, he demanded to know what my name was, because he was going to call the Village. By this point I was rather fed up with the jerk, so very distinctly I pronounced by name, then in a smart aleck way, began to slowly spell it.
This really ticked off the guy who said, “Do you think I am stupid?” to which I replied,”I just want to make sure you have gotten my name right.”
The jerk finally turned around and walked back into the train station.
We stood outside for a while trying to figure out what to do, since most of our jam members had not yet arrived, and at this late point, we could not inform them not to come. One was traveling from Valemount, an hour away.
One of our group who had arrived, offered us the use of her house for our jam, and so, after making sure she meant it, we accepted. We waited at the station for twenty minutes to tell the others where we were jamming, but then left to go to our new venue.
Once there, we began setting up, and called several of the local members and left messages on their phones as to where we were playing, then began with our music. We had three of those we had called show up later to join us.
Despite our distasteful occurrence at the station, we ended up having a very enjoyable time playing at our unplanned house venue.
This morning I called the director of the train station to warn her about what had happened at the station last night. She told me that the jerk, “Who is very difficult to deal with.” had called her complaining last night. I confess, I was happy to hear when she told me, that it had really pissed off the jerk, when I slowly spelled my name for him.
