Jerk of the Day

This has nothing to do with lost landmarks or even NYC for that matter, but what good is a blog if you can't vent.

So, I'm walking down a street in South Brooklyn with my six-year-old son when a small, but muscular and feisty dog runs up us and started barking up a storm. My son cowers behind me; he is afraid of dogs because, as he succinctly puts it, "I don't know if they're going to bite me or not." (Well said.) The dog won't let up. Then I hear one of three nearly stoop kings, each the shape of a giant meatball, say, "Don't worry. He's OK."

I say, just to explain my son's reaction, "He doesn't like dogs."

The stoop kings laughs. "Well, then he's going to have to move out of this neighborhood."

Ha ha ha. My kid is paralyzed, meatball, because you can't control your spastic mutt, and you laugh at and ridicule him?

I respond rhetorically. "Or maybe dogs can be put on leashes?"

Silence falls. They are dumbfounded that I offered a riposte and have criticized their mongrel. For a brief moment I think I am about to be pummeled. I turn and start walking. Behind me I hear, "Hey, this dog's live here for 20 years!"

How do people act like assholes and not realize it? This is the question that haunts me at night.