Grammar Hooligans and Meat-head Assailants

Last night was the opening night of the free Salt Lake Summer Concert Series downtown at the Gallivan Plaza. Ever played Mad Gab?: Displace wasp act. Sound it out, don't stress, you can get it. Dis place was pact. Got it yet? That's as far as I can take you. If you haven't figured it out at this point, there's no one that can help you. You're best off resigning yourself to small town, finding a nice, pretty wall, and passing your time in a rocking chair staring at that wall. For excitement you can sing the first line to the chorus of We All Live in a Yellow Submarine. Just the first line, which is the line you just read. Repeat it over and over. Anymore than that could cause serious damage.

The place was overflowing with peeps. It was like the peeps machine at the peeps factory had malfunctioned and was cranking out the disgusting marshmallow Easter candies at an astronomical rate, filling the room, the entire factory, then even spilling into the town streets. In order to survive, people in Peepstown would have to get into canoes or just use their mattresses and paddle around the river of flowing peeps.

At the concert I ran into my friend A-Rod. Don’t worry, she was fine. We briefly hovered on the outskirts of the peeps disaster, then I told her that I wanted to get down in the middle of the action. The Roots was playing (who, previous to the announcement of the concert, was a band that I’d never heard of) and I wanted to get all up in there, feel the vibe, rock the Casbah, hit me with music, with or without you, I’m too sexy for your love, hey kid put your pants back on!

A-Rod lead the way as we worked through the sweet and condensed mass of pulsating people, trying to get closer to the action. Suddenly I felt a pair of strong hands wrap around my throat and squeeze. I was being suffocated from behind. I couldn’t turn around. I was being shaken, my throat being crushed by an unknown demon. Then I heard a deep growling voice yell, “Get behind me!” and I was thrown like a limp biscuit. I luckily landed on my feet (there really wasn’t any room to land in any other position), almost crushing some lady’s little kid.

I looked at the dude that had attacked me from behind. He was a huge squatty meat-head that had the fire of Dick Cheney in his eyes. His solid glare held me back like a wall—not that I had any intention of going back near him. I don’t know if I’ve seen rage like that in one person, especially rage directed at me.

I don’t know if it was the adrenaline or the surprise or what, but it wasn’t until about 30 seconds later that I really understood all that had happened. And that my throat started hurting. I contemplated my options:

1) Go find a chair, come back, and crack it over the bully’s skull, hopefully knocking him out or at least rendering him unretaliatable.

2) Try what my church softball coach told me when I was 15—if you’re in a fight with a guy that could probably pummel your brains out, punch him as hard as you can right in the nose. That will stun him, and probably swell up as it fills his eyes with tears, that way he can’t really attack you.

3) Pull a samurai sword out of my backpack and slice his thighs, Achilles’ tendons, and buttocks. Or…

4) Walk away from the loud noise, call the police, direct them to the criminal, and get him hauled off to the slammer.

In the end I decided to do nothing. My initial anger at getting man-handled like that subsided fairly quickly and I just walked away, eventually working my way up to the front row and having one of the funnest (which, for all you grammar hooligans living in the past, is an actual word) concert experiences I’ve had in a long time. Poor Squatty probably spent the rest of the night on his tip-toes trying to catch a glimpse of the action, while I moved on and became the action.