Miffy

[apologies to Dick Bruna, creator of Miffy] 

"I think our Family were always subject to being a little Miffy." [1]

––Benjamin Franklin, letter to his sister Jane, August 3, 1789 [2]

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I've been a little miffy lately.

I yelled at a stranger today. Hollered at her in public, in fact.
Can I blame the humidity?

I was walking around Lake Calhoun with bink and her dog Alfie. We'd stopped on the walking path to rearrange ourselves so Alfie could walk between us. 

As we walked on, a woman in pink and black Lycra ran past on my left and startled me by trumpeting in a haughty, commanding voice, 

"Please decide which side you're walking on."

I was incensed. She'd pushed one of my pet peeves: people who police other people, especially in recreational areas. Plus she just reeked of an "I always have the right-of-way" attitude.

Without missing a beat, I yelled after her,  "Get a life! You can just run around us!" 

She gave me the finger behind her back.  

I cupped my hands and hollered (she was running pretty fast and was getting out of range),
"LITTLE MISS PRIVILEGE!"

Boy, was I mad, but a couple 12-year-old boys were standing on the path ahead, rigging their fishing poles, and I felt some chagrin at the thought that the peace of their summer day was ruptured by this harridan (me). 

As we got close, I said, "I'm sorry, guys, I was shouting in your direction... I guess I overreacted to that runner..."

And they said, "Oh, she was rude! She just came charging straight at us." 

When I told Marz about this runner, she said, "I think I saw her running around Lake of the Isles too.  A group of runners passed me and one of them said to another, 'So how often do you get to see your nutritionist?'"  

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[1] miff (n.): 1620s, "fit of ill humor," perhaps imitative of an exclamation of disgust (compare German muffen "to sulk").

miff (v.): 1797, "to take offense at;" 1811, "to put out of humor"
--etymology online

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[2] Benjamin Franklin quote from Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin (2013), a nonfiction book about the sister to whom B.F. wrote more letters than to anyone else. 

It's interesting, but I wince every time the author, historian Jill Lepore, writes a portentous sentence, which is often. It reads a bit like bad historical fiction.

You can almost hear a drum roll accompanying her chapter-ending sentences such as, "And then, she picked up her pen."