On the street corner, I pause. My Canon Rebel hangs heavy around my neck, apparently feeling the weight of the dreary day as much as I am. We came out on this walk specifically for the purposes of photo hunting, my camera and I, but have yet to find a muse.
Nobody said these 365 day challenges were supposed to be easy.
I’m about to push the button for the pedestrian-controlled light on Burrard when I happen to look back at the last storefront I passed. A recently defunct bath and kitchen fixture shop whose vacant interior I had initially dismissed after a cursory glance. But now that I look again, isn’t there something strangely pleasing about the dated tackiness of the white wrought iron staircase that leads to the store’s second level? Don’t the retro lines just somehow seem to *pop* amid the green profusion of leaves reflected in the window?
I backtrack from the curb, taking the lens cap off as I move, and get to work framing my shot.
I’m just snapping my first photo when a voice hacksaws through my concentration. A rough, grating, carrying voice that makes my spine itch. You know the kind. Like the owner’s vocal cords have done time in a cement mixer. The Voice of a Hundred Thousand Marlboros.
“HEY, LADY!” caws The Voice.
I ignore it.
The Voice could be calling out to anyone, after all. I don’t need to assume every Tom, Dick and Harriet yelling salutations to ladies on the street is referring to me. And besides, I’m busy. I bring up the preview of my test shot in the viewfinder and then fiddle with my camera settings.
“HEY, LADY!” repeats The Voice.
Against my better judgement, I sneak a look out of my peripheral vision. A woman in a beat-up red Toyota Corolla is leaning out the driver’s side window with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, staring in my direction.
She clearly wants me to go push the button and change the light for her.
But she’s going to have to ask, and ask politely. I don’t respond to “hey, lady”.
“YOO-HOO!”
I don’t respond to “yoo-hoo” either.
I feign deafness and continue snapping photos and adjusting settings.
She tries everything; whistling, flailing of hands, more calls of “hey, lady” and “yoo-hoo” and even a “HEY YOU OVER THERE!”
Everything except “Excuse me,” “I beg your pardon, but…” or “If it’s not too much trouble, could you…?”
Funny how those expressions aren’t in some people’s lexicons.
The Voice wastes at least two full minutes trying to talk AT me instead of to me. I take more photos than I could ever possibly need, just to rankle her. Finally there’s a natural break in Burrard’s six lanes of traffic, and she zooms off across the intersection, having learned absolutely nothing.
And I stroll over and push the button for the light.
Lack of manners and littering are my two biggest pet peeves. And I just can’t handle being called Lady. I’d rather be ma’ammed.
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If she’d taken the time to get to know me, she’d have known that I’m no lady.
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Yo, Shutterbug!
Hey, Annie Leibovitz, over there!
Ay, picture clicky-clicky, I’m talkin’ to you!
š
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*blinds you with high powered strobe flash, tags you in epic red-eye photo on Facebook*
Never mess with a photographer. š
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Dude! You’re like a Jedi! With a Lightsaber that can give your Dark Side a double chin!
š
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bye the weigh: the pix of that shuttered semi-vacant with the upper staircase to know-wear, izzit nearby?
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But, where’s the picture of the wrought iron staircase?
I also do not respond to yoo-hoo or hey lady.
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Better left in the past, I’m afraid. This was three years ago (don’t know why I happened to recall the incident today) when my standards of what constituted a “good” photo were significantly lower.
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Choh. And she no doubt believes YOU are the one with the problem. Some people are arseholes. Am glad you didn’t let her get her way! Nutty-1, Cement ‘Lady’- 0.
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She’s very lucky you didn’t consume her liver.
Or take her picture and upload it to a dating and/or porn site.
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I considered the liver, but I didn’t have any fava beans or Chianti with me so it just wouldn’t have been the same.
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Some people’s children!
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no, you’re NOT jay! i am !
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Wow. I really can’t fathom the thought processes of some people. I think I would have just stared at her incredulously until we were both sufficiently uncomfortable. š
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Hahaha! I love this! Sometimes when I read your posts I secretly think a part of my soul must have detached itself at my birth and incarnated into your little Canadian body at YOUR birth. That’s not weird or anything is it?
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Perfectly normal assumption!
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“Hey, lady” rubs me about the same way as “m’aam.” Makes me feel old. Which makes me cranky. I get it:).
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Yes , that is rude but well , here am at loss sometimes how to get attention of waiter at small , not-so-hi-end hotel. I would like to call them Bhaiya (= Bro) which is polite and decent here , but they do not respond , then my husband whistles, raise hands and loudly calls out “Yoo-Hoo” or sometimes like “Oi Boss” and it works!!!
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Ah, but that’s someone being paid to do a job and not doing it. Last I checked, I was not employed by the rude lady at the traffic light!
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