I Offend the Tweedle Man

A few nights ago, I was cruising around in the Fine Fare trying to find the few weird things that are on my new diet plan (don't get me started on that) when I started to hear a very pronounced "Tweedle!" It sounded for a hot second like a bird had gotten trapped in the store somewhere, so I looked this way and that and, not seeing a bird in distress, I went about my business.

There it was again - "Tweedle!"  and it didn't stop.  About every, oh, fifteen or twenty seconds - kinda like torture - there was this "Tweedle!" that was disturbingly sparrow-like and yet... the sparrow would have had to have weighed around eight pounds to produce a "Tweedle!" of that magnitude.  On the richter scale of tweedle, it was an 8.5.

It couldn't be real.  Was it some sort of alarm system, or Hartz-Mountain bird-seed display, or maybe a Christmas decoration gone horribly wrong?

And then I figured it out.  There was this weird dude giving me, and all the other shoppers, furtive glances.  Checking us out.  And... pursing his lips in a very telltale way.  A very "I'm about to tweedle" way.  Uch.  Some sort of weird, practical joking bird-imitation guy.  He was doing it himself somehow, with his annoying pursed lips - and then looking around to see who thought his imitation was a "real" bird.

Okay, I said to myself.  Nice one.  Now cut it the fuck out.  I started picking around in the dairy aisle, looking for fat-free yogurt, when there it was again - the over-amped "Tweedle!" that I now knew was coming from some weird, furtive Tweedle Guy as a symptom of his arrested development.  Tweedle Guy had seen me looking around and - was FOLLOWING me so he could tweedle AT me.

"Will you cut that out please?"  I'd wheeled on him and stared him straight in the face.  He looked like I'd just caught him, well, doing something inappropriate.  And then he decided to act as if he hadn't done it.

That would be the end of it, I thought.  So I headed over to window-shop in the lemonade and iced tea section, wondering whether to give in to the temptation of a carton of Paul Newman's sinfully good and over-carby lemonade, and... "Tweedle!"

"Look, I know you're making the stupid bird noise.  I know goddamned well there's not a bird in here.  Cut the crap, okay?"

He skulked away, and I went off to the frozen vegetable aisle to make my appointments with brussels sprouts and green beens.  I know he didn't stop, because though he was no longer stalking me, I distinctly heard a distant "Tweedle!" coming from the direction of produce and lunch meat.  God, I thought, this city...  this freaky deaky city.

Last night, I walked into the same market and grabbed a basket from the bag check area, where one of the managers was standing around with... Tweedle Guy.  Tweedle Guy apparently works at the Fine Fare in some capacity or other, although all I'd seen him do so far was stand around and... and...

"Tweedle!"  Uch.  Motherfucker.  Stupid tweedly motherfucker.  I put down the basket.  I addressed Mr. Manager Man.

"Can you ask him to stop making that bird noise?  It's fucking annoying."  Yes, I have a potty mouth.  On special occasions, when the potty is just THE place to be for finding vocabulary words.  I don't think he understood me completely.

"He making that noises." says Mr. Manager Man, and points to his colleague, who is staring off into space.  Yes, I knew that.  I knew somebody was making the noise.  I wouldn't be telling an actual BIRD to cut it the fuck out, would I?

"Yes, I know he's making the noises.  He's always making the noises.  And it's really fucking annoying."

Triumph, no.  Because the manager then explained to me that the Tweedler couldn't help it.  "He something wrong with him." the manager whispers.  Oh, Jesus.  Nice one, Palumbo... the Tweedle Guy has tourettes.  Or something.  Something bird-related that makes him mute but for the sound of an eight pound urban sparrow.  He's mentally challenged, and practicing this birdy noise for hours each day, trying to trick people for a cheap thrill, is all he's got.  Tweedle, tweedle, you heartless bitch.

I would like to say I acquitted myself well by apologizing to the Tweedle Guy and buying him an ice pop.  If my life were a movie on the Hallmark Channel, that's probably what I would have done.  What I actually did do, since I'm a dyed in the wool New Yorker, is take off for the Entenmann's display and brace myself for the inevitable.   The phrase "don't make the noise... don't make the noise... please don't make that fucking annoying horrible awful I-want-to-strangle-and-kill-you-noise-" was on a loop inside my head.

"Tweedle!"

Uch.  Oh God.  It was like an icepick to the brain.

So I skipped the Entenmann's section.  Not because of the diet but because of its proximity.  Paper products was far enough away, so I started my shopping over there and hoped for a relatively tweedle-free experience.

As I tried to reach for the toilet paper with my short little arms, I thought about thousands of infinitely more annoying things this city has to offer than just a bird noise, albeit a freakishly loud bird noise.  People who save up their morning gaseous emissions and release them on a crowded subway car.  22 year old girls eating cupcakes on the street because they think it makes them look whimsical.  Bloomberg.

This did not make me feel better.

But, if getting "Tweedle"-d at is the worst thing that happens in the course of a day, I'm doing fairly well.