Yesterday I did something very weird and uncharacteristic: I screamed into the bushes in the park by the pond in the center of town. Not a high-pitched, horror-movie scream. A yell, I guess you’d call it. A gravely roar. It was brief, but very loud. I didn’t hold back. (Not easy for me!)
I’d considered waiting until I got home to do it, so as not to disturb / confuse / scare the people or wildlife (squirrels, Canada geese, ducks, etc.) around me. But screaming in my backyard and potentially disturbing / confusing / scaring the neighbors and local wildlife seemed like an only slightly better option. And I really needed to get this scream out.
Screaming for the sake of screaming isn’t something I do regularly. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this sort of urgent need to scream—or this certainty that screaming is, in fact, the only reasonable thing to do.
It was Ken (not his real name) the postal clerk who put me over the edge.
About forty minutes earlier, I’d gone to our little 1950s-era Anytown USA downtown Post Office to mail a package. As I stepped inside, the 60-something white guy behind the counter was in the process of berating a woman for not knowing how to fill out her passport renewal form.
“You’re an adult!” he was telling her, although he was very much talking to her as if she was not one. “You need to figure out how to do this on your own! All the instructions are right there.”
It was clear that the woman was having trouble understanding him—her first language was not English (she was Chinese, as I soon learned). But this dude did not care. “This is your second passport. You should know how to do this by now!”
On and on he went, chiding and scolding, while the woman tried in vain to ask whatever question she was trying to ask.
It was when Clerky McAsshole said, “You need to get someone to help you if you can’t figure it out,” that I couldn’t take it anymore.
“She’s asking you for help,” I said.
The clerk looked momentarily startled, then said to me: “It’s her second passport!” Like this explained everything. “She should know how to do it!”
Friends, I have renewed my passport and those of my children multiple times, and it is far from straightforward. The forms are inscrutable, and if you make one little mistake, bam. You’re back to square one.
“I just renewed my kids’ passports,” I said. “It’s complicated. And if your first language isn’t English, I’m sure it’s even harder.”
Then the clerk said, “Don’t you preach at me.”
I’m not sure how what I’d said construed “preaching,” except to the extent that perhaps to this guy, anything a woman says with conviction is “preaching.” But fine, you want some preaching, Ken? (I’d managed to make out his nametag by now.) I’ll give you some preaching.
I leveled my eyes on his. “You’re not being very kind.”
Ken had no reply for that.
I then told the woman I’d help her, and she was very warm and sweet, and we went over to the little desk and I attempted to help her figure out what else she needed to fill in, and where to send the form, and how much the fee was, and the fucking fee amount was not listed on the form, so in the end, I was about as helpful as Ken was. I apologized, but the woman said it was no problem; she’d go to the post office in the next town over, where they were much nicer.
I still hadn’t mailed my package yet, so after the woman left, I had to go up and interact with Ken. He acted as if nothing had happened. In fact, he was very cordial and pleasant. I was as terse as humanly possible. I almost said something to the effect of would you have talked to me the way you were talking to that woman? But accusing racists of being racist generally isn’t that productive, so I kept my mouth shut.
The second I was back outside, the urge—nay, compulsion—came:
I. NEED. TO. SCREAM.
And I knew that this need wasn’t just about Ken. It was about the story I’d read that morning about “woke” quotes about slavery and immigrants being removed at the Bunker Hill Monument. And the one about immigrants at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey being denied medical care and edible food and due process. It was about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. It was even about the international arrivals hall at Logan airport where I’d been three days earlier, with its signs and announcements in English only, unlike pretty much every airport outside America.
Fucking America.
Fucking Ken.
Cut to me forty minutes later, standing at the edge of the pond.
AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
<Insert wide-angle shot of waterfowl launching from the pond in a mad beating of wings; this didn’t actually happen, but would have been cool if it had>
Now here’s the obligatory part where I say—especially for those of you who don’t know me well—that screaming is not enough. Shoving sheetcake into one’s mouth is not enough. One must channel one’s fury in more productive ways. And I do. Probably not enough, but I do.
Honestly, though, I think I’m going to start screaming more often. I’m generally a pretty even-keeled gal. I don’t get riled up; I don’t pop off; I don’t make a lot of noise. (Unless I’m holding a bullhorn—something that takes me way outside my comfort zone).
It’s not that I don’t feel things strongly; I do. But for various reasons, some of them having to do with growing up with a volatile parent, I think, I tend to keep a lid on my anger. (My husband is reading this and thinking excuse me, what? But that’s different!)
Yesterday, though, I leaned into it a little more. Both in the Post Office, and at the pond. And it felt exactly right.
These are times worth screaming about. Neighbors and area wildlife: Consider yourself warned.
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