Ol' Yazid is at it again.

Through some combination of aversion and evasion I've managed not to wrangle with him lately, but last night I was in the gardens chatting with one of my Section Coordinators when he came flying down a garden path, chasing after a little old man with a big bag stuffed full of grape leaves, screaming and flailing his arms like a mad man.

Yazid: a nesting doll of rage.

The little old man was known to all of us.  He has been visiting daily and stripping arbors bordering the paths all over the garden of their grape leaves.  I have asked him on more than one occasion to leave some for the rest of us. 

When confronted the little guy will do the international sign for "eat" and say, "eat, eat!"  Yeah, well I didn't think you were going to wipe your ass with them.  The garden society now officially classifies him as an invasive species. 

There's actually a little woman who comes on his days off and loads up, too.  My sense is that they may be immigrant kitchen help at a local sub shop of Greek provenance that has found a free supply for its homemade dolmathakia. These locavores will stop at nothing.  Hopefully they'll supply a side dish for our July 4th cook-out.  It's really the least they could do.

So anyway, Yazid comes tearing down the path in hot pursuit and he’s screaming his head off at the little Greek, who’s all of five feet tall and utterly secure in his inability to comprehend anything anyone around him is saying to him. He’s standing there blinking back at this wiry ball of rage, and then just turns and quietly saunters off.

And Yazid can’t just turn it off, man.

So he turns to another gardener who's been minding her own business in her own garden while this has been going on and starts screaming and flailing his arms at her.

"Why you not do somefing?"  he bellows. 

She's plugged into her ipod and has no idea what Yazid's on about. 

Yazid didn't mind. 

"You must do somefing!" he screamed, all up in her grill now.

Time for another intervention *sigh*.

"Yazid!" I shouted from the Accessible Garden.  "Please leave Eva alone!"

He was all up in my grill in a flash. 

"You no tell me who I can talk to!  You no say what I can do!  You not the boss of me!"

Yazid is like a nesting doll of rage.  I know from experience that anything I could say at this point would simply peal away one layer to reveal another.  First it was the little Greek with the grape leaves, then Eva's not asking  the little man to leave, and now my asking him to leave Eva alone for not asking the little man to leave.  This could go on forever.

And being nice to Yazid doesn't help.  I actually thanked him for being so vigilant (while suggesting a simple, "I'm calling the police" would probably shoo even the peskiest of pests away), but he was all wound up and nothing I could say would have wound him down again.

"I come to this country!  I do more for this country than anyone here!  You don't know!  I had hard life!  You don't tell me who can I talk to!  What can I do!  This is America!"

Alrighty, well...

I thanked him politely as he sputtered on, turned my back to him and walked away.  Which is really all you can do when it comes to this.  I mean, he was basically screaming declaratives at me.  Yes, it's true, you came to this country.  Yes, it is America.  He obviously didn't need me there for any of this.

He stomped back to his garden, but moments later obviously still agitated he came marching back down the path looking determined, making a bee-line for Eva's garden with a defiant sidelong glance at me.

I had a flashback to my then nine year old nephew, who gave me that same look when I told him to put down the ceramic garden gnome my sister had sent from California for my ailing father right before — oopsy! it slipped from his hands and crashed into pieces on the pavers at his feet.

The way that turned out... his mother was mortified, of course. My father's secret garden, hidden behind a hedge outside the bay window of the breakfast nook, had become a rare space of joy and calm during his illness, and my sister's sending him a garden gnome was a rare moment of levity in those last days.

So my sister-in-law was like: "No ice cream on the way home!"  But by the time they left two hours later and he asked, pathetically,  "can I have an ice cream on the way home?" she was all like, "well, we'll see."  Whatever.  Whaddya gonna do?

Back at the ranch, Eva was in the far corner of her garden with her ipod on, working with her back turned to the front. Without asking, Yazid, whom she had never met before the verbal assault of moments earlier, entered her garden, walked up behind her, basically cornering her. 

She reacted again with surprise — The Section Coordinator and I were not far from the scene, and we both knew that this was part provocation.  In the interest of not escalating the situation into a full-blown tantrum, we hung back.

Yazid, standing too close, said a few words, apologizing I gathered, and when Eva reached her hand akwardly (since he was already crowding her) to shake his, he ignored her body language entirely, grabbed her, and squeezed her to him. He then stalked back to his garden triumphant.

I was happy that he had apologized and that Eva had been such a good sport, but even his "apology" was a matryoshka doll of provocation wrapped in spite wrapped in intimidation wrapped in ... God only knows what all.

Well, like everything he does, God love him.  I mean, when children behave this way they are conditioning their parents, aren't they?  Eventually it doesn't matter what they do.  They'll get the ice cream on the way home. 

It's easier than taking the lid off the nesting doll of rage.