Dear Girl in TJ Maxx,

I am not quite sure what happened – I was standing there, minding my own business & perusing the baby blanket aisle for a gift for my buddy, when all of a sudden I hear a *huff* & the screeching tires of a stroller about to pop a wheelie or figure eights.  & in a blur, you & your stroller & friend blew behind me like a bee stung your ass.

& your friend whispered, “That was pretty rude.”  She sounds like a good girl with common sense.  You should keep her around because your response was a very, very loud, “Well, her FAT ASS WAS IN MY WAY & she wouldn’t move.”

Emphasis on fat.  Emphasis on ass.  Emphasis on you looking back at me to make sure I heard it.  Me & the rest of the shopping congregation.

Look, honey.  I don’t know you.  I don’t know your name, where you’re from, or whether or not you were actually raised in a barn (although I have my speculations).  I do know that you don’t know me from Joe Blow & that prior to your explosion heard all the way to the register about the enormity of my derriere, there was no request for me to move.  There was no subtle cough.  There was no coquettish giggle as you apologized & leaned over me to get to the product you desired.  There was no brightly chirped “Excuse me!”  Nothing that registers polite on Emily Post’s Give-A-Shit-O-Meter.

& even if you did one of these things & I was so immersed in deciding whether this baby should be welcomed in fleece or thermal (which is doubtful) that I didn’t hear you, there was obviously enough room for you to go around me without causing a scene.

But you did cause a scene & the bottom line is, you called me a fat ass today.  & it hurt my feelings.

So this is where I sit you down with a cup of coffee & talk to you, Mano a Mano.  Woman to woman, mother to mother.  QUIT BEING A BITCH.  There was absolutely NO NEED for you to yell that I have a fat ass simply because I was doing what customers do – stand in an aisle.  Only I am allowed to say that, & even that is only after I’ve eaten a cheeseburger & then decided to try on new jeans.  (I also use the word “dumb ass” quite a bit in that situation)  There was absolutely no reason for you to say it at all, but you did.  At the top of your lungs, with a glance back at me to be sure I heard.  TO BE A BITCH.  So let me push your bangs out of your face & tell you this – IT’S NOT WORTH IT.  Quit the bitch.  Tuck that inner cat fight away into a drawer – nay, a coffin – & let her die.  She’s not cute, she’s not sassy, & she’s not that weirdly-cute-snobby that can be really funny.  She’s obnoxious, hurtful, & she sounds ignorant.

Really?  A fat ass?  That’s the best you can do?  I bet you didn’t know that I just lost 35 lbs.  I bet you didn’t know that like you, I just gave life pretty recently.  Or that I’m wearing a shirt that is too small for me today because my kid spat oatmeal all over my first outfit today.  There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, based on looking at me.  That you’ll never know, because you were too busy letting your inner bitch do the talking.

& let’s face it, if I hadn’t let them take my inner bitch away to be composted with my placenta eight months ago, or my anti-psychotics working quite so well in this moment, I would have asked you what number your hair color was so that I could have it permanently banned from the universe.

love,
A (semi) Reformed Bitch