…but, if you want to accuse me of being one, you’d better find a polite way to do it.

An example of how not to do it happened less than an hour ago in front of Safeway.

Today was one of Gremlin’s dentist appointments, so there was a prescription to be filled. And with that comes a bit of time to wander around and pick up a few things, like the supplies I needed for making this lasagna recipe I found.

I also got some loaded baked potato soup, but I’m strangely not hungry anymore….

Why?

Because, after we paid at the pharmacy counter, and were walking out of the store, some unAmerican wish-I-was-a-cop shithead came sprinting out after us and demanded that I let him search my backpack, because ‘we were caught stealing’.

Gremlin, who just got some teeth pulled, handled most of that. There was some shit about us stealing an employee and stuffing him into a backpack, but I think that was just a matter of very bad english.

I, meanwhile, was very angry and very much glad that Mr. Asshole in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre rubber apron didn’t actually try to touch me like he seemed to want to.

Things are different in America, buddy. Here, we have rights.

This guy then calls the manager out, who assures us that we cannot, in fact, sue the store if they call the cops on us and are proven wrong. The manager, of course, is Mr. Big Large Threatening Mass, but his tone is much more polite than Mr. I Just Came Across The River.

The manager called out the guy who said he saw something, who seemed to then say he didn’t see anything, but then he saw something, but he didn’t see anything.

So, finally, I jumped in. “You wanna see what’s in my backpack? Fine, you can see what’s in the large compartment. Everything else in the smaller compartments is personal property, and you may not see or touch those things.”

Because they’re mine, and you don’t sell them here….

Gremlin says that my saying this made the manager smirk, like, “Now I know where you’ve hidden the stolen goods.”

My backpack was originally a laptop-carrying-case backpack. I got it for free with my laptop, because my laptop was open stock, and had no box. Other than room for a laptop, though, it’s not very good at holding things. My copy of Lord of the Rings takes up most of the room — and I had that with me today.

So…I opened up the main compartment, dug out the receipt, and then dug out the three items I purchased from the store.

The manager said something cryptic and rude about finding me based on my cardmember number before I got my receipt back.

Then, just to throw him off, I opened the other compartments. Ooh, look, large book, and a case for sunglasses. And an empty bag. And another empty bag. And some napkins.

I asked him if I was required to purchase the napkins, even though they were given to us by one of the deli workers.

He didn’t have an answer.

I asked if we were now banned from the store for something we didn’t do, and he sounded awfully generous about not banning us and how it was up to us if we chose to shop there again.

I get the feeling that, if I do, I won’t be able to go more than a few steps in the door without having five of their little nothing-better-to-do workers following me around.

You assholes. I liked your store. If I’m going to be accused of shit by a couple of people who barely speak one word of AMERICAN — and I don’t count that gangey ebonics crap as anything American — then maybe I should take my money and my support elsewheres.

Or maybe you should learn to be a little more polite about your accusations, instead of chasing down a couple of people like they’d just killed someone and shouting accusations — funny, how there was no shouted ‘I’m sorry, you’re innocent’ — so that others may hear.

And while we’re at it, maybe you should put up a sign that says ‘no backpacks’, if that’s really the source of all your losses.

I really dislike people….

Maybe next time, I’ll get really lucky and someone will accuse me of having a bomb in my backpack. I can’t wait.