The Scene: El Mercado, a middling Tex-Mex restaurant in the vicinity of my apartment, where the landlords apparently still haven’t realized I’m living for cheap without a lease.
The Prelude: C-Man’s graduation from the UT School of Arguing A Lot, my attendance at which resulted in a scolding from the man sitting in front of me for talking too much with C-Man’s mother.
The Incident:
C-Man and I are eating.
A woman walks up to our table.
Woman: “I just have to ask, we’ve been talking about it at our table, are y’all dating or are you brother and sister?”
Me, in no mood for chatty strangers but trying to be polite: “We’re dating.”
Woman: “Oh my god that is so weird, and you know, if we had to make a choice in our group we would have said brother and sister.”
Me: “Well, we just consider it a nice coincidence.” [Meaning: that we both have red hair. I was a bit taken aback and having trouble forming coherent thoughts.]
Woman: “Seriously, though, if y’all are going to get married and have kids you really need to have genetic testing done because you might be related and not even know it, and then your kids would have horrible genetic deformities.”
HELLO?
She was laughing as she said it, but I’m not sure any amount of laughter in the world would have been enough to make that ok for me. I gamely tried to be pleasant (mostly because I was in shock) as she continued to badger us, pointing out to C-Man that he needed to be “playing footsie” more often to remove confusion for onlookers.
As she walked away, she made a comment to us about how the people at her table were now trying to pretend they didn’t know her, because they didn’t believe she would actually come over and ask us.
Somehow, I think there might be a deeper reason.
“Is it genetic, or do you actually have some choice in being insufferably rude?”
Of course, “Piss off,” would be all I could probably manage in like circumstances.
What a disgusting thing for a woman to do. Christ.
Wow. That’s pretty incredible. Laura and I did have a woman pull over and yell out the window to ask us if we were related or if we were married, but somehow that was funny in a way that your TexMex Inquisition was not. Didn’t C-Man have a lawyer trick to divert her line of questioning? Or are those not taught in law school but rather in the sweaty confines of the courtroom alone? …. There, see how easily it can be done?