I'm from South Philadelphia. I don't usually live up to the stereotype. One time, I was having a bad day and I saw red.

I was in the library and was in an aisle and had made my presence known to a guy as I was getting by.

Even so, guy bumped into me hard. Maybe he didn't hear or notice. I said some things. He said some things. It got ugly and we both sounded like a couple of assholes. We got louder and we used bad language and said very shitty things to each other in between threats.

We made a scene and neither of us backed down and we both said stupid shit to each other. I dunno about him but I walked away feeling ugly but at least I didn't back down kind of thing.

I kinda come out of the red haze a little and a librarian is sitting on a chair about fifteen feet away from me reading to a bunch of little kids sitting in a semi-circle, half of whom had their mouths wide open at what these two grown ups had just done.

Librarian looks at me like "Really, bro? In the library?"

Felt like such an asshole. I went up to the guy and shook his hand and apologized. I had some shit going on. He had some worse shit going on and we chatted for a minute. It could have ended worse.

But I will never stop cringing whenever I think of the way that librarian looked at me.