Alley Cat Fight

So, this happened to me in the ballet alley today:

I pulled up behind a car to drop Ptolemy off.  After he hopped out, the other car didn't budge, and it was about 7 minutes to noon.  I thought maybe she was dropping off a dancer, so I waited.  At five to, I tapped my horn the slightest bit as if to say, "Hey, um..."

Everyone knows not to block the alley, right?  And if she was waiting for a dancer, it would be another at least 5 minutes, so she couldn't just wait there.

Finally, I walked up to her car thinking I'd say hi, see who it was, see if maybe I could just squeeze by.  I wasn't in a hurry, but I knew cars would start piling up behind me.  This woman, beautiful and young, rolled down her window and said haughtily, "If you would just BACK UP, I'd be happy to pull off to the side, but I am NOT circling around."

Wow!  Taken aback, I said, "Oh!  OK, but I'm not sure if you can fit with the orange cones there and everything."  (Thinking to myself, "You know, the orange cones that are there to prevent people from pulling over?")

She pursed her lips and said in a condescending voice, "THAT'S how it works.  Everyone does it."  And then she rolled up her window in my face!  OK, that made me mad.  But since she was acting like a witch, I was left to play the part of Good Guy.  Smiling, I tapped again.  She shook her head.  I jokingly threw up my hands.  She rolled down the window.  I said in my Good Guy voice, "I'm sorry, I just, you know, some of the parents are new and I didn't mean to..."

She cut me off with a curt, "I'm not new.  I went here when I was little."  Trying to find common ground, but also a little annoyed that she was just plaid rude, and not merely clueless, I said, "So, um, I teach here, and I'm pretty sure they don't want us pulling over because, you know, of how dangerous it is..."

She shook her head and started powering up her window for the second time.  What Scott said about me throwing zingers must be true because I tossed out in a bewildered voice, topped with a fake smile, "Wow, I can't wait to have your kids in my class!"

With two inches to go in the window crack, the other mom spat out HER final zinger: "I'll make SURE they're not!"  I was left with my mouth hanging open, a "What?!?"  dropping wilted from my lips into the slush, my hands literally thrown up in the air for the second time as the mom looked the other way, through her giant sunglasses, pretending I was gone.  Aaaaaand the win goes to the other mom.  I was totally defeated, so if that was her intention, kudos to her.

Moments later, I WAS gone, but the frustration would linger, hampering my ability to focus on my kids, interfering with my thoughts, wiping out the goodwill I had been experiencing.  I'm still at a loss as to how I could have gotten in such a petty fight.  It makes me wonder who this other woman is in real life.  Is she nice?  Who am I in real life?  Am I rude?   The whole interaction made me completely lose perspective, and I can't get over it.  I keep thinking, "She is going to make SURE her children aren't in my ballet class.  She is going to make SURE her children aren't in my ballet class."

That makes me really sickly sad, and it's going to take a LOT of Christmas fudge to make it all better.