A 60-year-old woman with expensive hair and fluoro tights leapt from the ferns and threw her arms out, blocking the track in front of me. “Stop,” she said. “Stop right there.
” I did. I would have had to push her out of the way to pass; she was waving her arms and flexing knee-to-knee like a goalie, ready to leap left or right to thwart my progress. I was startled, not knowing whether I was in a penalty shootout or chosen as a gigolo by a randy hermit.
People so rarely physically arrest my progress when I’m at my leisure that when ambushed in the forest by stringy-armed biddies in stretch fabrics I am generally aghast. And I was this day. “What the f--- are you doing?” I asked gently.
Credit: Robin Cowcher The “Karen” phenomenon has been widely reported of late. You can go online and view a slew of middle-aged white women throwing their weight around in public, having hissy fits, bossing shop workers, telling strangers where they can and can’t park, waggling their phones at cyclists and scooter riders and threatening them with arrest. I’d seen them on YouTube, policing their neighbourhoods, but I hadn’t expected to be Karen-ed so far from a CBD.
“You can’t take your dog along this track,” she said. “It’s a national park. No dogs in here.
Turn around.” At one time I would have replied to this self-anointed (yes, anointed – she blared with orange Trump gloop, perhaps in imitation of that other great wall-builder) sheriff by claiming to be a .