Power of Yea.

I am not willing to review all my blog entries to see if I’ve told y’all about my sister’s delightfully scene-stopping “yes”, so I’m just going to explain it again. If you already know, skip ahead.

You use this yes in a situation where someone is mad at you, or more likely wants to be mad, or wants to start an argument. They say something stupid and/or obvious, and you just say “yes”. TOTALLY dead pan. Not angry yes, not defensive yes just yes.

F’rinstance: I was shopping for scallops once. Not something I do often, as I have doubts about any scallops that have made it this far inland. Nevertheless, I was practicing cooking scallops and that meant I needed scallops. Sobeys had six left. So when it was my turn at the seafood counter I said I would like six scallops, please. The reply to which was a moderately irate “but that’s ALL of them. There are only six left altogether”.

Yes.

Totally floored the guy. Don’t know what he was expecting but the glory of the yes is that there is no arguing with it. You just agreed with the person, so there is nothing more to say.

So, today’s story. Which is really Monday’s story but things have been busy. I had to take a bunch of boxes to our downtown office. As you can imagine, the parking isn’t great. Big city, small city it’s all the same: parking downtown sucks.

There was one space, though; the loading space at the back. It’s with all the visitor spaces (all six, two of which are handicapped spaces), and is for – duh – loading and unloading. I parked there. I went and fetched a book truck. Loaded the boxes, took them to the 3rd floor and went back to the car. Only to find an irate trucker standing by my car.

I had barely unlocked the car (remotely) before he started in on me.

“Can’t you read? What’s you’re problem?* This is for unloading, or didn’t you know that????”

“Yes”.

He paused and then said “yes…what?” I was sorely tempted to say “yes SIR” but what I said was “yes, I did know it was a loading zone. And given that I was unloading and loading boxes it seemed eminently reasonable to park there”.

I drove away with him still standing there all gob-smacked. Best part of my day. Which is probably sad or possibly even mean, but I takes em where I can get em.

*Would it not be more logical to ask those in a different order? What’s your problem first, then can’t you read?