Diary of a Crazy Cajun Lady

Well, first off I should admit that I'm not actually Cajun. I was born and raised in southeast Louisiana, on the dirty coast, between bayous and canals, an oyster shell beach and oil refineries. Dem der Cajuns live a bit furder west ;) ~ out in south central and southwestern Louisiana. So, I wasn't born Cajun... I earned the monicker "Crazy Cajun Lady" in Memphis, where I lived for 6 years after Hurricane Katrina. Now, whether or not I'm actually "crazy" is a bit beside the point here. Please hold your comments until later. What I slowly revealed to those closest to me, that which earned me the nickname, I will share with you now.

Woe to those who serve up injustice or speak or act unfairly toward someone I care about... Be ye mindful, lest the Crazy Cajun Lady show herself and deal with you swiftly...

For the most part, I think people who know me would describe me as a relatively docile, peacekeeping, non-confrontational lady. A couple of those friends would go so far as to say "classy." And I think I live up to those descriptions 90% of the time. Of course, we can't be all sugar & spice all the time, but I don't get riled up very easily. Mean people, rude people, bad traffic, no more of your favorite wood table cleaning product at any grocery store ANYWHERE, buying what turns out to be rotten produce at the grocery, returning it, going to a different grocery for the same product, getting it home and finding that it is ALSO rotten... ok so, those last two were rather specific and did cause me quite a bit of frustration. I can't really explain the cleaning product situation to you right now, though. Most of you wouldn't understand. Those 2 of you who do, bless you.

I got a little off track there, but the point is, yes, these somewhat minor frustrations can unhinge me just a little bit. But what really gets to me, the thing that almost makes me forget that I was raised well and know how to act in public, is when I am a witness to injustice. Whether it's an unfair remark or action, if directed toward me or someone dear to me, I can come completely unglued. It doesn't even have to be a particularly serious situation. I will give you an example that has stuck with me (and witnesses, no doubt) over the years...

"Excuse me, Mr. Spanish Train Nazi, sir. You seem to have taken what is rightfully mine."

While in Spain for a couple of months in 2005, there was one day that my husband and I decided to take a short train ride into Barcelona, as we often did, to just walk around and enjoy the city. And eat an ice cream. Because that's what we did. So, on this particular day, we didn't have much money (5€ to be exact) and had just enough train trips on our pass to get us into the city (1 each) and were counting on that 5€ to buy us another ticket to get back. And don't forget the ice cream.

We arrived at the station in Barcelona and got to the turnstiles where we had to put the ticket through to get out of the station. I went through first, put the ticket through, and the ticket jumped back out as though it hadn't been read, so I put it through once more. This time, it went through just fine and came out on the other end. I handed the ticket back to Buddy and walked to the other side. Buddy put the ticket through, and just like it had done to me, it came back. So he tried again. And it came back... again. So he tried and tried while I waited impatiently for him to come through. The ice cream had probably run out by now, I was sure. So Buddy, being the reasonable person he is, didn't jump the turnstile... he walked over to the gentleman who looked official and explained that there was a problem. In Spanish, of course. The attendant looked at the ticket, talked to Buddy for a while and finally let him through. When Buddy came over to me, he told me what had happened. That guy had charged Buddy 3€ because he said the ticket had only one trip on it, so Buddy had taken an illegal ride on the train. Preposterous. There were 2 trips... I knew something was wrong. So, I got really angry and told Buddy I wanted to speak with that man to try to get our money back. After all, we now had 2€ to eat an ice cream and buy 2 passes to get back, and the passes alone would cost around 2.20€. Buddy insisted that we just let it be, but I said nay. This was completely unfair. Yes, it was ONLY 3€, but for the love of all that is good and sweet and chocolately, that was MY 3€, and that greedy bastard stole it. He had grossly underestimated how poor we were that day, and little did he know, he was about to meet the Crazy Cajun Lady right there in Barcelona, Spain.

Now, I should say here that my Spanish at that time was... marginally intermediate at best, and that was when I was calm and composed. I was nearly unhinged by the 3€ affront, so I didn't have all of my linguistic abilities handy at that moment. Against Buddy's wishes, I stormed over to "Servicio Cliente" because that seemed like the place to go and proceeded to attempt to explain to the nice lady at the counter what had happened. She scanned the ticket in question in her computer and found that the ticket-taking machine had mistakenly printed over one of the trips (when it spit it out the first time I tried it) and used up 2 trips for 1. She found this out in a matter of moments. She then instructed me to go get the offending attendant and bring him back so that she could show him the error of his ways and give us our refund. Well, she didn't have to ask me twice... I was out the door, looking for "El Señor." I really did go around asking various official looking people where "El Señor" was, and for those of you who are not familiar with the nuances of the language, "El Señor" can mean "The Lord." It's no wonder one of these gentlemen responded with "El Señor? Estaba aquí?" ("The Lord? Was... here?") with a VERY confused look on his face. Eventually, though, I find this guy who'd virtually robbed me and managed to communicate to him using all of the Spanish I could muster that he needed to come with ME. NOW. To the Servicio Cliente.

He came, begrudgingly... maybe in retrospect, more out of confusion than anything -- about what was happening and why this little American girl was babbling on in some semblance of Spanish about who-knows-what... 3€ maybe? And why that vein was visibly pulsing from her neck...

He arrived with me at the Customer Service desk, and the nice lady told him very rapidly what I had said, what she had found, and now what it was upon him to do. He fussed a bit, looked at us, and fussed some more, and very grumpily counted out 3€ from his nerdy little moneybelt and forcefully handed them over.

I walked away feeling completely victorious. Buddy walked along half laughing, still trying to figure out what had just happened. But that is what happens when unfairness rears its ugly head. The Crazy Cajun Lady gon' get ya. Wherever you may be, you're not too far away. Africa, Europe, North America... If you're doling out injustice, don't get found out by me.

And there's, of course, another moral to the story:
We got that damn ice cream that day. And we ate it too.