Tales of an ugly American in Canada

At least I think he was an American. You see, I stepped out of my swanky marbled hotel lobby, onto the corner of King and Yonge and was approached by a young woman emerging from the subway asking for the time. Very pleasant at the time. She was tiny with wild curls coming from out from under a knit hat in the misty morning on the North Shore.

On the corner was man, large in stature with really bad cowboy boots, speaking rather loudly but not yelling about Ronald Reagan and George Bush's principles theoretical place in contemporary Canadian government. The tiny woman with big balls approached him immediately and confronted him with a response I couldn't quite hear as her messenger bag was now facing me, the other American. I think.

Whatever her comment was it enraged the man in the bad boots. The voice went up with some choice words to her, the tiny one. My interest was now fixated on this public exchange. The tiny one without hesitation reached and found a water bottle in her bag and threw it at the ugly American, as though her national pastime was baseball, and hit him square in the chest at the instant the word fascist finished passing her lips.

Silence. At least in a theatrical sense loomed over the corner. Just for a moment.

Stunned, he turned and walked away into the figurative sunset, head literally lowered, as a dull applause began from the peanut gallery.

Poetry in action, eh?