Several years ago, I had three small children at home including my then six-month-old son. I had gained approximately one metric ton during the pregnancy as my best friend, who was pregnant with her twins at the same time, and I would eat our way through the malls giving zero fucks. We’re pregnant, get out of our way or we might eat you, too.

One day, I had to run to the store for a few things, like you often do with a house full of kids. It was a hot, sticky day in the Portland area, and I was wearing a peach tank top and some jeans shorts, my hair up in a messy ponytail to keep it from sticking to my sweaty, sunburned shoulders.

I parked my car on the far end of the lot, and, as I walked towards the grocery store entrance, this 70s era Ford Bronco with the top carved off, making it fully open topped, slowly cruised by, slowing down even more as it pulled up next to me. It was chock full o’ dude-bros. I didn’t know any of them, so this was odd, why are you slowing down? Figured maybe they were just looking for a parking spot that didn’t exist nearby.

One of them yells loud enough for anyone in proximity to hear, “HEY! YOU, YOU BEACHED WHALE!”

I stopped dead in my tracks, and acknowledged them with a look of “What the fuck??” Because…what the fuck?? Was he actually talking to…me?

The rest of the dude-bros laughed a hearty laugh, and the driver continued on, saying, “That fat bitch has no business wearing shorts…”

They apparently had said what they had to say and sped on by, leaving me standing in the parking lot with my jaw dropped to the ground.

Why.

I went into the store, doing my best to shake off this verbal assault, and grabbed the list I had made out of my purse.

But I couldn’t shake it. I’m in the midst of a prolonged postpartum funk, I’m exhausted, I’m hot because it was, at that point, the hottest day of the summer, and I was actually enjoying a break from an apartment with no air conditioning and a car with no air conditioning; the grocery store was a bit of fucking reprieve from my chaotic reality. Usually.

Today, however, my body had somehow provoked a verbal assault that was designed to humiliate me just for existing.

So, instead of feeling that reprieve that only the cool air and bland musical accompaniment that a supermarket can give you, I stood in the dairy aisle fighting back tears because a bunch of dudes in backward baseball caps and tank tops called me a fat bitch whale.

I grabbed the supplies that I had come in for; bread, cheese, milk, lunch meat, diapers, wipes, baby aspirin, a pack of gum. I paid for my groceries, rolled my shopping cart through the parking lot towards my little blue Nissan, and there it sat: The shitty open-topped Bronco.

But it was devoid of dude-bros.

I suddenly felt like I had to do…something.

Anything.

I WANTED to slash their tires, but I also didn’t want to go to jail. That and I didn’t have a knife for tire-slashing in my purse. Dammit.

I had only one weapon, well, three actually: 3 gallons of Darigold 2% Milk.

I looked at the milk.

I looked back over to the open-topped Ford Bronco.

An open-topped Bronco just sitting there, the interior completely covered with a dark red carpet, in 98 degrees of summer sun, minding its own business.

There was only one thing I could do.

I quickly surveilled my immediate surroundings, noting that I was mostly alone in the parking lot.

I grabbed two of the gallons of milk, ripped off the caps…

And I proceeded to empty the contents of the milk jugs into this motherfucking Dude-bro Bronco.

On the seats.

In the speakers.

In the heating vents.

Into the dashboard.

Soaking the entirety of its shitty red carpet.

Adrenaline was screaming through my veins…and I was laughing. Crying, too, because hormones are a motherfucker, but laughing. I felt goddamn TRIUMPHANT knowing the havoc I had wrecked upon this Bro-buggy. I giggled at the mere idea of what sort of smell would be emanating from the curdled milk in every nook and cranny of this dickwagon.

I glanced over at my cart and thought, do I use the last jug of milk?

Yes. Yes I do. I am NOTHING if not thorough.

Into the Bronco it went, splashing with every contact, painting white the parts of carpet which had already absorbed my prior dairy douching efforts for good measure.

I threw the empty milk jugs into my cart and ran to my car, threw the groceries into the backseat of the Nissan, and sped out of that parking lot like a bat out of hell, laugh-crying the whole way back to my apartment complex a half-mile away.

I pulled into my parking spot, grabbed my groceries, and ran upstairs to my apartment, throwing open the door so I could get inside and slam the door behind me in case anyone was chasing me, even though I was pretty sure no one had even seen me.

My husband, hearing me enter, turns around.

“Hey, you’re ba….OH GOD, WHAT’S WRONG???” The look on my face was crazed, tear-stained, and victorious.

“I DIDN’T BRING THE FUCKING MILK HOME,” I blurted. And busted out laughing once more at how very little sense my response and manner in which I delivered it would make with zero context.

That was well over 20 years ago, but I do still sometimes wonder just how much destruction my retaliatory milk-assault caused.

I hope with every fiber in my fat ass that it was as malodorous, fetid, and barf-inducing as possible.