white trash

Ok, so the other day I pull into a gas station to get gas. I’m one of those people who actually goes to the gas station to get gas and only gas. I rarely venture into the price-gouging convenience store part unless I’m on a long trip somewhere. I use my card at the pump to avoid going in and thus temptation. Anyway, so I pull in front of a sort of beat-up red Honda Civic with some do-it-yourself customization as is commonly found on such Japanese makes. I’m not talking the professional stuff but the cheap stuff you find at discount stores, you know, the high-intensity lights that aren’t high-intensity or HID at all. They’re just blue tinted light bulbs.

 

So while the guy heads into the convenience store the wife/woman is sitting there surveying a quad bike catalog. Quads and motocross bikes are pretty popular in the south – actually anything with a motor is popular. And singletrack that mountain bikers build around here gets ruined by quads. Saw it last week when we went out to Castle Hayne to ride on some (former) singletrack, now rendered wide, rutted mud pits.

 

So there’s about maybe a 2yr old child in the back seat. She starts fussing and immediately the mom turns around and appears to swat at the child and yells at her, then turns back around and goes back to reading the quad catalog. If this woman had any brains in her head whatsoever she would realize that the kid is crying because the sun is directly in her eyes and can’t do anything about it. She’s strapped in a car seat leaning back. I had to really restrain myself from going over there and giving her a piece of my mind, but at that point the father (maybe) came back out with sodas and cigarettes and I felt there would be no point in me trying to do anything about it. I just felt sorry for the little girl – having to grow up in a crappy environment with parents that obviously don’t have their priorities straight.