Not all hecklers are created equal

About 15 years ago, I was running in my hometown of Concord, New Hampshire at rush hour on a sidewalk fronting one of the busiest streets in the city, and heard someone yell, "HEY, FAGGOT!" from a passing vehicle. It was a booming epithet, rising impressively far above the cacophony of the traffic zipping up and down North State Street past Blossom Hill Cemetery.

I turned, expecting to see a pickup truck covered with Trump stickers and loaded with rural folk, but instead it was a shiny black late-model SUV, and the yeller was a guy in a dress shirt and tie. He was leaning out the window and grinning at me from behind large sunglasses (think Tom Cruise in Risky Business) and there were two little girls in the back seat, one gawping and me and the other at her father, or kidnapper, or whoever the driver was.

I was not offended in the least, because I was too busy being astounded. What kind of world was I living in if I couldn't even accurately stereotype people who yelled old-school slurs at joggers?

This guy was clearly either someone who worked in a professional office setting or a Mormon. What next, some lecherous guy in a tux gets himself elected president on a tide of proudly misogynistic public statements?

Now, I am still thinking that this might have been someone I knew from high school expecting me to recognize him, but I never determined whether this was the case, and the story is better if it actually wasn't.