Short people and high tempers

In Cosmopolitan magazine this month there is a list of attributes a woman should hope to have cultivated by the time she is thirty. I was just skimming through it in the queue at the Spar, so there are only two that I can clearly remember.

The first is to be able to prepare a signature dish. I`m in the clear on that one. The second is to have mastered the art of walking gracefully in stiletto heels. Oh dear.

At five foot one, this is a skill I would do well to add to my repertoire, but since I`ve never really been motivated by a desire to be taller, my balancing act remains an `unpolished piece`. The only time that I have ever really been bothered by my height is at concerts or in queues, where staring at the back of the person in front of me is a claustrophobic way to spend my time.

This is why, this past weekend, at the Rosebank Mall, in the queue for the parking payment machine, I was standing in the queue, but slightly to one side, with my extended foot in place to mark my position. A woman came up behind me, but chose to disregard my presence and step into my place, so when the person in front of us stepped forward, I sidestepped into my rightful place in the queue.

The woman who was now behind me turned out to be one of those awful people to whom dealing directly with other people is an anathema, so she turned to her friend and said in piercing tones obviously meant to be overheard, "You have to move quickly these days, or people push in front of you in the queue."

The ensuing torrent of abuse was ugly, and my determination to not let her get a rise out of me only served to propel her to further heights of dementia.

Georgina Guedes, editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

I turned to her, smiled and pointed out that I had been in the queue all along. She was stupefied at being taken up, and so demanded that I repeat myself. By the time I did, she had allowed her humiliation at being confronted to evolve into a full-scale fury.

"Were you listening to my conversation?" she screamed repeatedly. I blandly informed her that when you say things loudly about someone standing next to you, you can expect them to overhear, as was obviously the intention anyway.

The ensuing torrent of abuse was ugly, and my determination to not let her get a rise out of me only served to propel her to further heights of dementia. Once I had paid for my parking, she left her friend and pursued me to my car, spouting obscenities and screaming to anyone who would listen that I had infringed her right to freedom of speech. When we got to my car, she made a point of taking my licence plate, as if she was going to report me for this misconceived injustice.

I was pretty sure that there was very little she could do with my licence details because any official would most likely take a dim view of a hysterical woman demanding justice for the infringement of her queuing rights. However, this ludicrous encounter did bring to mind some information that a friend of mine gave me about a group called eblockwatch that people with genuine complaints can approach for recourse.

Eblockwatch is an organisation that provides members with information via SMS and email relating to area-specific crimes so that their network can be on the lookout for suspicious vehicles or individuals and feed the information back into the system. They do not aim to replace the South African police, but rather to "create a sense of community and public spirit".

And they are very effective. The friend who told me about them was able to track down a person with whom she had had an altercation in Cape Town, who had subsequently assaulted her mother and damaged her car. His Namibian plates meant that it was virtually impossible for the local police to trace him, but through the eblockwatch network, his Cape Town holiday home was located and they was able to hand his details over to the police.

So while I hope that a woman who so blatantly misunderstands what the right to freedom of speech actually entails isn`t able to find any satisfaction in her quest to "take me on", eblockwatch does provide a valuable service for those of us frequently frustrated by the inefficiencies of the current justice system.