What would you title a post about a student's parent trying to beat you up?

It is guided-tour-of-campus season at UCI.  Bubbly undergraduates escort groups of thirty or so prospective students and their parents around Ring Road.  After conferencing with students for a few hours, SEK runs to the Zot-n-Go for coffee.  He wears his typical day-of-office-hours attire: an expensive sweater, rumpled jeans, trusty shoes and a backwards New York Mets cap.  As he leaves he bumps into a FORMER STUDENT escorting prospectives and their parents around Ring Road. 

FORMER STUDENT: To your left you'll see the Student Center and the Zot-n-Go.  Coming out of the Zot-n-Go is my favorite composition teacher ever (SEK waves and smiles politely as she puts her hand to her face and in an exaggerated whisper says) who actually wears that cap to class sometimes.

PARENT: (loudly) Fucking loser.

SEK: (stops) Excuse me?

SEK turns to confront PARENT and sees the sort of uptight wealthy white folk who grow on trees out here.  He comes from money and married young and is likely upset at how much a college education costs.  He has a foot and about 100 lean lbs. on SEK.

PARENT: You heard me. (steps to SEK)

SEK: (walking backwards) I have office hours to attend to.

PARENT: That's what I thought.

SEK: (confused) You thought I had office hours?

Because he ain't too bright, it is only now that SEK realizes that this forty-year-old in a starched business suit complete with snappy suspenders is trying to pick a fight with him.  In broad daylight.  On Ring Road.  In front of his kid and a group of strangers.  The PARENT makes for SEK, who shoots him a look and says . . . 

FROM THE DESK OF THE ACEPHALOUS INDUSTRIES LEGAL DEPARTMENT:

SEK hereby declines to inform you what he allegedly said because his response might be construed as lame and unnecessarily inflammatory.  In lieu of gratifying your desire to know what SEK allegedly said, SEK respectfully requests you guess what words were expelled by his constitutionally "smart mouth."  Furthermore: SEK acknowledges that although the unflattering description uttered by PARENT may not be inaccurate, at the time of the utterance said PARENT had no knowledge of this fact.

Comments

[Ahistoricality]

"Oh, a Yankees fan? I hope your kid has a safety school."

[Jonathan]

A foot, eh?

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Fear is to height like the camera's to pounds, Jonathan. He was at least 8'3". (Fearfully speaking.)

[Mikhail Emelianov]

Our campus has these red phone things that you run to an ring the campus security folks, I swear that's what I would and not because I would be afraid to confront the parent, but for a sheer joy that I would experience trying to explain to the security people that I was actually attacked by a PARENT! Seriously, wtf?

[Jonathan]

I can't help but picture this guy with the build and exact demeanor of Gob Bluth.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

More like STEVE HOLT! twenty years later and just smart enough to be bitter.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

(Plus when you think about it, I'm pretty much Buster. I would've jumped in the ocean but, you know, seals.)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

(Also, PARENT wasn't on a Segway.)

[Meg]

Parents... They're so parenty... and utterly predictable. And predictably hostile to the very people who try to make their children succeed in their academic endeavors. Parents. (Sigh.)

[Meg]

STEVE HOLT!!!! (STEVE HOLT....)

[Rich Puchalsky]

Jeez, think of his kid. Mortification city. Bet you anything that the moment that kid goes to college, he/her is going to do a lot of sex and drugs with random strangers just because that would piss off Dad. Your frightening moment is those random strangers' gain (I suppose) as well as the kid's years of therapy.

[The Modesto Kid]

And was this PARENT the parent of your FORMER STUDENT whose favorite you were, or just another parent in the group? I mean it's weird either way to be sure, but there would be an extra frisson of strangeness if he was saying "fucking loser" about the teacher his daughter had just identified as tops with her.

[CP]

The kind of guy who wishes he was that "I flew here in a diamond encrusted helicopter, that's my name!" schmuck from that terrible Mamet movie. Gotcha. Related question: Was his hair plastered against his skull with expensive mousse?

[Wally]

Was this about the hat, or the fact that the hat was (OMG) backward, or how your expensive sweater means you're probably a sodomite, or how college is for bitches, or what? This sort of stupid tough talk isn't usually about picking a fight though - most fights are walked away from, I imagine. I suspect the idiot was trying to get a Mets-related laugh?

Ask the tour guide when you get a chance! I'm curious as to whether he made any other trouble.

Also, calling Glengarry Glen Ross 'terrible' discounts one's comments thereafter.

[Wally]

Or hold on, he did make a grab for you. Shit, man, this was your time to shine! Hold a knife to the kid's throat and yell 'If you let me go I'll save you the $150,000 right now and just kill this little résumé-padding motherfucker!' Put him in the position of autonomous moral secret agent, see how things play out.

[Karl Steel]

When whatever legal whatever ends, please please please let us know what happened next. I hate guessing.

[CP]

Wally:

But I do like Dollhouse. Does that in any way redeem me?

I'm just not a fan of Mamet, except for his deeply weird appearance on Dr. Katz.

[Adam Roberts]

Did he say: 'Baseball grinds my fucking gears! Why don't you people play cricket?' Did he say that? Did he?

[tomemos]

CP: You diss Glengarry Glen Ross, and then you ask for respect because you like Dollhouse? I'd put down the shovel and back away slowly.

[tomemos]

Ahistoricality got there way before me—first comment, in fact. I was assuming Phillies fan, but it works out to the same thing.