The State of Massachusetts

My uncle, who was born in Ireland and knew plenty about our family’s history of emigration, once told me a voyage on the ship from Southampton to New York cost nearly twice as much as going from Southampton to Boston. This explains everything.

More stupid shit has happened to me in Massachusetts than anywhere else on earth. If the x-axis of a graph represents places, and the y-axis represents the number of bizarre fucking things that have happened to me in each particular locale, the state of Massachusetts would show a massive spike running three times the height as any other place, including New York.

This is because people in Massachusetts are fucking insane. Most people, when they’re irritated by a Masshole for the first time, believe this place is so strange and inefficient because the people here are stupid. This is not the case. Instead, I think people are clinically fucking disturbed up here, and I always have. I have a long history with this state—including residency for long stretches—and I know what I’m talking about. Trust me on this one.

Case in point:

We’re driving down Main Street in Great Barrington, going to the diner to eat lunch. Parking on Main Street is tough—as it is, unnecessarily so, everywhere in this state. I see a spot along the curb, so instead of pulling past and parallel parking, I nose the car in directly from the right lane—because I had space, and because I’m a really fucking good driver with over twenty years of heavy experience, including several years spent driving 54’ trucks for my uncle. Long story short, I know what I’m doing. This is relevant.

I shut the car down, and we’re about to get out when a woman gets out of the minivan in front of me and starts yelling at me, gesticulating like someone lifted her fifth of Dewar’s before she could take the last swig and backhand one of her kids. She was claiming I’d hit her car. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even come close. I was at least two feet behind her the entire time, and I told her so. There’s no stopping a Masshole onslaught once it’s in motion, though, so this whole thing had to play itself out.

“My caaaaaaaah raaaaaawwwwwwked!”

“No, it didn’t!” I yelled back. “I didn’t even come close to you, you goddamned crackpot! Get away from me!”

I really said this. Leave me alone, you fucking mutant crackpots.

This was not an honest mistake, nor was it someone trying a “clip job” to get some insurance money out of me. This was a prototype raving Masshole, hailing from the great state of Mass O’ Mutants, inflicting her mental illness on me as only a true New Englander can.

When I was younger, and this shit was new to me, I thought people from Massachusetts were interesting and colorful. Unfortunately, Massholes no longer have the power to hold my attention—unless they’re enraging me—and I don’t have time for the way they attempt to complicate our lives with their psychological issues. One day I’ll write about the lady who inexplicably made it her mission to prevent me from getting a $2 discount on a pair of headphones at a Lechmere store, or the parking ticket clerk at Government Center who cursed at me for offering to pay $20 more than I actually owed—an option he offered me—because I didn’t want to wait on another line. Same concept.

I love Boston to death, but this is probably why I’ve never moved back.