Not even joking. Hahaha... Anyhow, here's a little situation that happened to me today and I'm finding myself wondering what might come of this because it was really odd and unlike me in the first place, and while I think I'm legally safe, who knows what mess I'll end up in. Let me know what you think and/or whether I was in the wrong/right/etc. Here's the semi-interesting story of the day:
(Foreword, I live in Santa Barbara at the moment, notorious for rich people, old people, and tourists... or rich old tourists, the place is so fucking pretentious it makes me shit blood.)
So... I'm driving to one of my college campuses with my girlfriend in the passenger seat and my roomate riding right-wing. We are headed to register for our next classes, same 'ol shit. There happened to be a crappy paperback bible in the back of my car that had been randomly given to my girlfriend the previous day by some crazy bum on the street. I don't know why it was still in there, to be honest. On the drive, my roomate started reading it and joking around about it, making fun of it because he's that type of dude. As I'm pulling up to a stop sign in the left-turn-lane, there's a tourist trolly-bus thing stopping to continue straight... It's a tourist sight-seeing bus that is designed like a San Francisco trolly with the open sides and rails and all, pretty lame. My roomate's name is Justin and my girlfriend's name is Krystal for future reference.
Justin: Should I give some old tourist bitch this bible?
Krystal: Do it.
Justin: Here, I'll toss it to one of them.
Me: Are you serious...?
(We pull up next to the tourist bus full of white-haired old women.)
Justin: HEY. JESUS LOVES YOU.
(Justin underhand-lobs the book towards the open area of the trolly but misses by entirely too short and the book skids on the asphault.)
(We chuckle because it was stupid thing to do and he completely failed.)
As I'm turning left from the stop sign, I notice the vehicle behind me (brand new Land Rover LR3) that should have been waiting his turn since other people were waiting at the intersection, was tailgating me, following right behind me through the intersection with his headlights flashing. I thought I was just seeing things or perhaps I was lagging at the stop sign due to Justin's stupid bible-tossing antics, and irritated the impatient driver behind me. I shrug it off and continue driving up the street into the hills towards my school. He continues to tailgate, hard.
I continue up the hill some more and he begins to ease off and fall behind a bit. I signal, take a left, and continue up the windy road and he takes a left too. I speed up because I'm familiar with the road and he starts to fall behind a bit so I assumed he was just headed somewhere and was bitching about the length of time I was at that stop sign back there. On the straight-away before the right into my campus, he catches up and follows me through the gates. It is obvious he's following me now.
His car is rather tinted but I can make out the shape of his bright white hair, moustache, and cellphone on his ear as he tailgates me all the way up the driveway to the parking lot of my school. I start getting really irritated that some dude is apparently chasing me because my roomate lobbed a paperback bible onto the street 2 miles back. I get into the parking lot of my campus, take a u-turn and head back towards the entrance, he follows. I take another U-turn to fuck around with him and see how long he follows me around in a circle.
I misjudged the narrowness of the road and had to 3-point turn to get that 2nd U-turn complete. After I reversed, stopped, and was about to go again, he zips up uncomfortably fast behind me as if trying to block me in somehow. I was already to move forward, but he comes within 3-4 inches of hitting my car. I was irrate. I floor it through the parking lot and go all the way around back of the campus and park in a lower back lot where you have to climb a good 20-25-steps of concrete stairs up a grass hill to get to the building entrance.
Justin, trying to get the old crazy dude to follow him because he was the one who tossed the book, gets out of my car right away and runs up the stairs full-throttle, mostly to be funny. Krystal meanders up the stairs at her own leisure while I'm not really amused with this fucking douchebag's antics and am ready for some confrontation where he yells at me for my roomate tossing a book on the road. I start walking from my car to the stairs and this fucker zooms up, almost hits me, and stops right in front of me, trying to block my car in its parking space (no car was in front of me so I wasn't blocked in).
I simply walked around his car and continued up the stairs without looking at him. A few steps up, he rushes up besides me, storming up the stairs at my pace, staring at me with some angry, red, old-man face, seething with fury over who-the-fuck-knows-what. I look at him, smiling a bit like a smart-ass.
Me: 'Sup?
Old: Yeah, we'll see what's up when I talk to your faculty.
Me: Haha... I don't care who you talk to. I didn't do anything, so good luck with that.
Old: No, I saw you throw a book at some innocent person.
Me: No, you didn't because that wasn't me, go find him if you want to yell at someone.
Old: You are the owner of that vehicle, you are entirely responsible for what happened.
Me: Pff... whatever. Have fun with talking to whoever.
Old: Yeah, I will.
Then, get this.... He fucking hits me.
This wasn't a punch in the face or anything, it was kinda' weird and an obvious sign of his flustered rage of unknown origins. It was like a hybrid combo of a punch to the shoulder and a hockey-style body check. He hits me to the side as hard as he can out of fucking nowhere. Out of the blue without me even instigating, I was just trying to walk up the stairs to go register for class, I was avoiding a confrontation with this nut.
So here I am getting knocked off to the side of this steep set of sketchy concrete stairs onto wet grass that I stumbled but somehow managed to not fall down onto. However, as I'm standing there for a half of a split second in utter shock that this old dude had the fucking nerve to assault me like that I realized I was getting nailed by a sprinkler in the lawn. It sprays me across the ass of my overpriced jeans and we meet eyes and I know for fucking sure he regretted what he did because the second my pissed off ass took a step towards that motherfucker, he turned his back to me to run back down.
We were a good 1/2 or 3/5 of the way up the set of stairs and I had the instant urge to toss that piece of shit tumbling back down from where he stood. I took a few leaping steps at him and he turned his back and tried to run away as I pushed him as hard as I fucking could. He tried to run down a bunch of steps to compensate for getting pushed but lost his balance and from about the 3rd or 4th step up from the ground, he ate shit... so... hard. He fell straight down to his hands/elbows/knees, completely layed out, skid across the ground a bit. I instantly felt a little guilty for how hard he hit the ground and worried that he broke something, but that subsided as I realized he was blatently and spontaneously starting shit with me... OVER WHAT?
I stood on the stairs above him still, like some type of cliche badass pose, with my fists still clenched out of anger, I called him a piece of shit and told him to get the fuck out of here. I look over to the side, 3 feet away from where he hit the ground and two girls, students, were standing there and saw the whole thing unfold. I ignored their presence and began walking up the stairs to go register for class like I came there to do. I look up and Krystal is standing there at the top and had seen the whole thing too, in awe at the fact that he attacked me, then in awe that he managed to pissed me off enough to toss his ass down the stairs. I'm very much a pacificst and anti-confrontational so this is way out of character for me, but apparently I don't take shit, I guess I learned that about myself.
Krystal: What the fuck just happened?
Me: I guess that old douche decided it was time to hit me instead of argue with me.
Krystal: Wow. . .
(We approach the entrance to our school and stand where there's a line of students for registration.)
(I look back to find the old guy approaching me again, this time limping)
Me: What did you learn? Are you going to try and hit me again, pal?
Old: No, not anymore.
The old fucker pushes his way through the lines of students, limping and nudging his way into the entrance. Turns out, he wandered around campus until he found a receptionist (of all people) to tell her what happened. He told her he was pressing charges and claimed that the book he was holding was the one we threw at some innocent bystanders down the road (impossibly considering he was tailgating me down the street while the actual little paperback bible was on the ground under a bus). She was obligated to contact campus security and now I have to file a report with them about what happened, as do my two companions.
I'm sure I'll be getting a call and/or a visit from the police any day now and I am just waiting to hear about this old guy's story about how I was killing tourists by clobbering them with 50-lb. dictionaries and ambushed him by throwing him down some stairs. I am imagining if he told the true story in its entirety, the police would laugh at him and inform him that a) he blatently provoked me while I was being non-violent and b) he hit me first.
I mean... what the fuck was he thinking? I didn't give a shit if he spoke to some random school counselor there for registration that someone threw a book on the road out of the back seat of my car. I was prepared to... not deal with anything and just have him go away after he realized he was wasting his time following me to my school in some obscure locale in the hills over a lobbed (and missed) book. So, he flipped his wig and attacked me with no warning.
I fucking hate old people and I fucking hate Santa Barbara.
(P.S. I'm not really looking for legal advice because BG is not the place for that, but I've never gotten in any kind of scuffle like this before. As I said, I'm pretty anti-confrontational, so I've never been in an incident of this calibur though I'm sure some of you have and might have had to deal with police and threats of battery/assault charges or something of the like. I'm just totally unfamiliar with this type of thing and I'm curious about what other people think of the outcome, heh...)