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By Deborah Weir

A beautiful woman with wild hair screamed, “Nuts!” She yelled again, “Nuts!” And again at the top of her lungs, “Nuts!”

Her target, a woman of color in a food truck at the corner of Madison Ave. and 57^th Street, froze in fear. I didn’t see any nuts in her display and wondered if she was afraid to admit it to her abuser. Perhaps she didn’t speak much English … or was just in shock from the assault.

“Idiot!” the nasty woman screamed at the person in the truck. The cold March wind amplified her voice and sent additional shudders down my spine.

That did it. I decided to step in between the bully and her victim. My whole body shook with fear of the screaming woman. My voice caught in my throat and came out as a hoarse whisper.

“That’s not nice,” I whispered to the rat’s nest of hair. The owner of the nest turned to me and glowered. She matched my stride as we walked down 57^th Street together. The beauty salon that would tend to my neglected hairstyle was several blocks ahead. My reflection in the Chanel window revealed a windblown woman in an old blue jacket that needed to visit a drycleaner. The woman beside me saw someone entirely different … someone entitled.

“You despicable woman! You had everything given to you! You know nothing about my life! You hideous person! You are what’s wrong with America today!” Then she strode ahead of me, so I thought I was safely away from her anger. However, she stopped and waited for me to catch up so she could start in on me again.

She repeated her tirade and loped ahead of me again. Once more, she waited for me and started screaming the same phrases. The few people who were on the street during the onset of the Covid virus stopped to stare. They knew that this was a real situation and not the performance art that one sees so often in New York.

One woman asked me why the screamer was angry. I didn’t have the nerve to say that it was because I stepped into a racial incident and confronted a bully.

“I don’t know why she’s mad,” I said as I attempted to cross a street. Another woman suggested that I cross in a different direction to avoid my attacker.

“Oh, no. It’s OK.” I said, determined not to give into Miss Rat’s Nest. I glanced sideways at her and sized her up for a knock-down, drag-out fight on the pavement. She was half my age and frothing with rage. But I was taller and more in control, so I decided that I could beat her in a fight. As we crossed the street together, she yelled at me all the way.

She finally melted into the crowd, and I slithered into the salon with no blood on my blue windbreaker or on the street.

Was this the pent-up anger that exploded into violence on streets across America the following summer?

— Deborah Weir

After decades of writing and practicing in the financial world, Deborah Weir is now preserving memories of growing up in Ohio during the time Erma Bombeck wrote her columns about the foibles of family life.