This guy had vanity plates on his vehicle.
I'll never forget his license plate. And I'll be able to recognize him all over town.
I would think that someone with a vanity plate (that's SO easy to remember and relay to the police) should make a point to have impecible driving skills and manners.
Wouldn't you?
When do people out-grow this childish behavior?
Apparently, never.
Yesterday, someone cut in front of me in the McDonald's drive-thru.
If he had only cut in front of me, I'd have just sat there and cussed to myself. But there were at least three other vehicles behind me that were being cheated, so I got out and told the guy that the line started "way back there."
Because cutting in line wasn't rude enough for him, he stayed in line until it was his turn up, and only then did he pull out and go around... with a stupid, red-neck, sh!t-eating grin on his face.
Now...
The tormented elementary-school kid in me felt like I had struck a good blow for humanity and the defenseless folks behind me.
But the grown-up in me felt like a jerk for telling another "adult" how to behave properly.
Your thoughts?
Jaj at The Funny Farm posted these 13 things.
The more I thought about it, the more I figured I could come up with a few, too.
1) Air fresheners that smell like food. Like I need my bathroom smells to be associated with vanilla and fresh baked pie. Ewww!
2) When the grocery store puts items in places I wouldn't expect them to be. For example, I expect bar soap to be in the health and beauty aisle with shampoo and toothpaste... but it's not. It's with the dish soap. Don't ask me to buy matches. I have no idea where they hide those.
3) People who complain about how lousy their vacation was... when you are the one who had to pick up their slack while they were gone from work. And especially when they have more vacation time than you do. Jerks.
4) Finding just the right gift for someone's birthday months ahead of time, and then completely missing their birthday when it comes.
5) Finding just the right gift for someone's birthday months ahead of time, and then they go out and buy that thing for themselves before you can gift it to them. Drat!
6) When people hum or whistle a popular tune... and they hum/whistle it wrong! You'll be humming along with them and suddenly, bam, they throw in a wrong note or half of another song they think they're humming. Argh!
7) When my kids make me say, "What?" a million times before they get to the point.
Like this:
Hey, Mom.
What?
Guess what?
What?
I was at school, and you know what?
What?
Sometimes, when they ask, "You know what?" I answer, "Yes, I do."
That slows them down for a second or two.
8) Hang up calls. If it's a wrong number, they should just admit it and say they're sorry. If they called their mother or grandmother by mistake, they wouldn't hang up on her, right?
9) Telemarketers.
10) Telemarketers that use automated dialers, so 4 or 20 homes get the same phone call, but only the first person to answer gets the telemarketer and everyone else gets hung up on. Everyone loses.
11) Automated telemarketers. If it's not important enough for you to pay a human to call me, then it's not important enough for me to hear. (Sometimes I feel better by holding down the * key and letting the high-pitched squeal mess with their system.)
12) People who think their money can buy them anything... especially things like respect and forgiveness.
13) People who let money buy those things from them.
VW Bug at One Happy Dog Speaks posted these hilarious testimonies.
I'd like to add this one:
High school classroom.
Male teacher hands out a surprise quiz. Amid protests, he attempts to calm the class by saying, "This is nothing. It's just one of my little quizzies."
Holding up the several pages handed to her, a student retorts, "If this is a little quizzie, I'd hate to see one of your big testies!"
Maybe that really bad dream was actually cathartic...
Maybe it was the husband's declaration today that he will be getting back to his "normal" schedule tomorrow...
Or, maybe it's just because I chose today to wear my personal power color.
But I almost felt kinda normal today.
It was nice.
So nice, in fact, I made a crack to the BIG boss today that prompted my own boss to laugh so hard tears rolled down his face as he said to me privately, "I swear to God, Roses, that is the single most funny thing I have ever heard!"
... the first thing you do is bop your head on the company's wall-mounted first aid kit!
Sheesh.
Has anyone here known a homeless person?
Either personally or in passing?
I have a problem:
There's a guy who sometimes shows up where I park every morning.
I would guess he's homeless, but I don't know. He might be waiting for a ride to work or something. Usually, he is sitting on a cement abuttment having a smoke.
He's not the problem.
*I* have the problem, because I'd like to do the right thing but I don't know what the right thing is.
Do I offer him a sandwich out of my lunch?
Give him my extra umbrella when it's raining?
Slip him a couple of bucks?
But what if he's not homeless?
Just some guy who lives in the apartments who's out getting some air?
How embarassing would that be?
"Dude, you look down and out. Have my sandwich."
"Are you nuts, lady? I'm just out here waiting for my pizza delivery to show up!"
Can you ask someone if they're homeless?
What is the protocol, here?
Alright, anyone who's already on the bus to hell for being judgemental... even though we all know we're not supposed to be...
::looking left and right guiltily::
here's more about the woman I used to work with...
(I was going to include it in yesterday's post, but thought it wasn't really relevant to the pregnancy issue. But now that I see how many readers were appalled by, um, let's call it, "alternative thinking", I think you may enjoy reading this part, too.)
When I worked with this woman, as you know, she was three times divorced. But there was no alimony or child support.
(What do you mean, why not?)
Because she had such poor judgement in men, she always picked the ones who weren't exactly the responsible, support-paying kind.
So, she was on several different assistance programs. With three children and no husband(s), we can understand this, right?
And she took Wednesday afternoons off to go to the food pantry. It's the one decent thing she chose to do.
Also:
While we worked together, she had arranged with the company to be paid under the table so that she could keep receiving public assistance.
Mm, okay...
Not a choice I would have made, but I'm not a divorced parent with three kids either, so I'll go with this one.
And the company was willing to help her out just this little bit, so hey, that was kinda nice.
But get this:
When the company refused her request for a raise, she got mad and tattled on them to the IRS for not paying her employment taxes!
::slapping forehead::
After they paid their fines, they fired her.
Oh, honey...
I know I'm not supposed to judge people.
I know
I know
I know...
I'm going to hell for this post.
But...
Sometimes some people just ask for it.
Really.
I ran into a woman I used to work with.
When we worked together, she was already three times divorced with a child from each different marriage.
She admitted she didn't have the best judgement in men.
Okay.
So, when I bumped into her the other day, and she turned around and announced, "I'm pregnant!"
all I could say was, "Congratulations?"
I don't think she understood that it really was a question.
But it gets better...
The next day, I called a mutual friend to ask if there was anything this woman needed. I was thinking diapers, clothes, a smack upside the head...
And this was our conversation:
Me: Is she still on her own, or is there a man in the picture?
He: Oh, she got married last year!
Me: Oh! That's good! That's really, really good.
He: Well, it was one of those arrangements... he needed a way to stay in the country, and she needed someone to help pay the rent.
Me: Oh.
(And thinking she didn't get pregnant by immaculate conception...) Hey, they at least must be "getting along" alright (wink wink nudge nudge)...
He: Oh, about as well as they can with him believing in Islam and she not so much.
*sigh*
She's pushing 40.
When is a person reasonably expected to grow up and stop acting like a horny teenager?
Sheesh!
Well, I guess my memory ain't what it used to be.
Thank goodness I kept a diary for most of my early years...
At the library last week, I went wandering through the "classics" for a change.
And I found Watership Down by Richard Adams with a picture of a rabbit on the cover.
"Hey, I remember reading this in school for a book report."
Remembering that I liked it and that it had a happy ending, I checked it out.
Dug right into reading it.
Bunnies! Bunnies! Bunnies!
Wheeeeeee!
"Oh, I didn't remember that happening. "
"Hm. How long until the friendly family moves in?"
"Man, these words are pretty big and strange. Not at all like the stuff I liked to read.
Maybe I skipped a lot. That would explain why I don't remember so much. "
"ACK!!!! How come I don't remember anyone getting trapped in a snare?!? I'd have remembered THAT!"
I kept reading and reading waiting for something familiar to happen.
Waiting for the family... and the mole... and all the rest of the animals...
Now, 400 pages later I realize,
I've never read Watership Down ever in my life!
How can that be?
I can remember the book fair, and my mom going over the suggested reading list, how I simply HAD to read a Newberry Award winner...
And I look at the cover of Watership Down, and there's no mention of a Newberry Award, or any other kind of award...
But I remember reading this book!
So, off to Google I go.
Apparently, the book *I* read was Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson.
But aside from that...
I read 400 pages of a book I had never read before I realized I had never read it before.
How sad is that?
Isn't that almost mentally troubling?
Now I'm starting to wonder what other fabulous "memories" I have that never really happened.
Humor just isn't funny to me today.
In fact, it's rather ticking me off.
I don't know how to deal with that.
Also, I had asked a well-informed athletic friend of mine to recommend to me a good yoga video, and he responded by telling me my family could spare me for an hour a week so I could take an actual class.
VERY wrong answer to my question, and I responded back by telling him what he could do with his advice.
I really need not to be around people today.
I scare myself.
Found out from Younger Son that there's a boy in his class who is not only annoying and distracting in class, but who also likes to cheat off Younger Son's homework.
Huh.
What do you do?
As a parent, you can't really tattle to the teacher.
And I didn't feel right encouraging my child to tattle either.
(And personally, growing up, I never did figure out the difference between tattling and being helpful... even though The Brady Bunch devoted a whole episode to the subject.)
So, I told Younger Son that I would leave it up to him if he wanted to tell his teacher about this other boy. I pointed out that the other boy wasn't going to learn anything by copying other kids.
"Oh, that's okay," said this son of mine. "When he copies me, I just write down the wrong answer and change it when he's not looking. And then he gets it wrong."
Well, then.
I guess he's got it under control.
