Because everyone needs a good drive-by f#@$ing now and again...

So this weekend was Women's Conference at BYU, which meant, of course, that strange things had to happen. For one, there was a traffic cop actually directing traffic at the Crosswalk of Death that I usually have to cross unaided twice a day. This was refreshing. I enjoy not taking my life into my own hands when I cross the street. I should get thousands of aging, gospel-starved women to hang out around here more often. That would, however, require us to put up signs like the above. I'm not sure I could take that.

However, as I was standing at said Crosswalk, waiting for the traffic cop to get around to trafficking, a small car drove by. As it passed, the rear window rolled down, revealing a clear cut young man, who flashed me a smile, and said, in a very polite tone, "F&%$ you."

I had been drive-by f*$#ed.

I gave the boy a smile and a nod, continuing on with my life, but couldn't help think about what possibly could drive someone to direct such malice in my direction. As a missionary I had experienced this more times than I could recall, but in those scenarios my Mormonness had been especially salient. To pick a random guy on the side of the road, make some very base assumptions about both his religion and his character based entirely on proximity to a Church sponsored University, and then decide him worthy of epithet seems rather hard to justify. Then again, I could be the one making base assumptions. Maybe a BYU student kicked him really hard in the shins one day without provocation. Maybe four letter words of any sort carry positive connotations in his particular idiosyncratic world. Maybe a vortex created by the swirling air around the open window transformed what he originally said into something he actually didn't.

In the spirit of the latter, I'll prefer to think he said "f&$* me".

If that is what he said, I think I'll prefer to pass on that offer.

TLDR: Refrain from committing the Fundamental Attribution Error, and keep your f*$#s to yourself.