Outfit Details: vintage dress and coat- Beacon’s Closet, tights and shoes – Target, vintage shoe clips – from my mom.

There’s a funny/scary story that goes with these pictures, depending on how you look at it. I woke up in a horrible mood, due to an onslaught of unhappy events, and I decided to try and brighten my day by wearing this pretty vintage dress while working at home. Sometimes (often) I do that; I get all dolled up just to sit alone in a room and sew.

Well, it didn’t work.

While taking pictures of my dress, a guy walked by and made a really lewd gesture and started saying things to me. I made the mistake of telling him to keep walking, which made him furious. He ranted for quite a bit and then threatened, “I’ll show you what the end of a 9mm looks like when put to your cheek, sweetheart.” He kept saying he was going to come back with a gun and shoot me and Bobby both, then started rummaging in his bag, looking for a knife. Here’s the thing: I deal with crazies all the time. When a guy makes gross remarks, I always say something to put them in their place. I can’t handle disrespect like that, and it’s so sad that any of them think we should be flattered or at the very least, just accept it. I can’t. I should, for my safety, but I have a hard time doing so.

There are so many crazy people like that in my hometown and I unfortunately have the mouth and temper of my mother. If you make sexual remarks about me or anyone I love, I will put you in your place. You yell at me and I don’t back down, I just yell right back. It’s stupid. It’s really, really stupid, because there is always the chance that the person will put a gun to my head and not just make an idle threat. Usually they just talk, but there is always a chance. The funny thing is, there are only two reasons I didn’t yell back: Bobby and that freaking bag the guy was rummaging in.

Bobby’s first instinct was to defend my honor, in that kind and collected way of his, which only made the guy more irritable. I didn’t want him to hurt Bobby and when he started talking about knives and guns and [supposedly] looking for a weapon, I decided it was definitely time to get the heck out of there. We walked away from our apartment so he wouldn’t know where we lived, eventually went to Bobby’s car and then took a drive. I was shaking from both anger and fear. When we got home, I changed into pajamas. The dress will have to cheer me up on another day.

But then I had a slurpee and everything was right in the world!

Oh, and the funny part? I originally didn’t want to tell my mom, because I didn’t want to worry her. I eventually decided to tell her about it, but she interrupted me to tell me that she saw someone who looked just like her best friend’s husband and it was freaking her out. A couple days later, she was having a hard time getting ahold of me on the phone, so when I finally talked to her, she was a little frantic. She said, “All I could think about what that guy telling you he was going to come back and kill you.” I reminded her that she thought seeing her friend’s doppleganger was more pressing than my crazy guy story, to which she replied, “At the time, it seemed more important!”

I love my mom.

Morals of the story:
– Guys are gross
– Don’t argue with crazy people
– Slurpees fix everything
-My mom needs to get her priorities in order.

-Keiko Lynn