I know, I know, think positively of people and make a happy world. I read the Facebook memes, I am aware that I am supposed to be nice. I am nice, but not so much in my head. In fact I think my eyebrows might be broken from all the frowning I do.
Over the last week, just for shits and giggles, I kept a running score of my interactions with people and rated those encounters according to how irksome they were. If you have never done this, try it – it’s very therapeutic.
As usual, I did the grand tour of errands, went to work, picked up kids from school.. nothing exciting really, but it was the people I ran into who scored over a 5 out of 10 on the throat punch scale who made it onto my list. To give you peek at the true nature of my pique, here are the people who ranked on the score sheet of “ARGH”.
- Change Fishing Lady – You know the kind, she is fully aware that she will have to pay for her groceries, yet doesn’t pull out her wallet until the cashier gives her a total. Then she squints at the bills in her wallet, or worse, tries to manage the card machine. Maybe she digs out a coin purse and fumbles around for exact change. There should be a lane just for this sort of person – and it would have cobwebs.
- Gas Station Lane Hog – this is the dude who drives a large penis enhancement truck and takes up a mind boggling 6 gas pumps, and one of them is just to accommodate the dangling nutsack decoration he has on his trailer hitch. I want to go up to his truck and kick him in the hitch balls.
- The Mouth Breather Clerk – this poor kid has a sinus thing or some other affliction that prevents him from speaking clearly and also apparently causes shuffle walking and shoulder shrugging. I want to put him in my cart and push him out the automatic doors when he can’t tell me where the tomatoes are.
- The Insipid School Mom – She is always at the school, and chats happily with those of us who make the mistake of opening our windows when we slow down in the school pick up line. No – I don’t want to join the alcohol free after supper book club… do I look like I can talk to PTA mom sober? And thanks but no, I don’t want to help with the family fun day because there is no bar. What kind of shit event is that anyway?
- The Overly Grumpy IT guy – This moody neck beard still lives in his mother’s basement and stumps around the office fixing computer woes. His deodorant has normally failed by 10am, so he makes for a scintillating after lunch interaction. As I stand as far away as possible with a scented candle jammed up my nose, I wonder what would happen if he ever stepped out into the sun. Would he blister up and melt?
- Holy Roller Door Knocker – This interaction never normally lasts too long because it goes something like this: the doorbell rings, I open it to see that church issued megawatt smile coming at me from the drone in a conservative suit. Then I put on my Satan voice and start touching myself inappropriately. As he runs down the driveway, his hair catches fire and he rakes out his eyes. Sermon over.
I was thinking about adding another one called “overly enthusiastic friendly bug eyed chick” but she might recognize herself in this post.
On “Magnolia’s Rankle Scale” the top six scored pretty high. Rather than keeping my list and grumbling into my collar, I set it aflame and threw it out the window. After all, I could write a list of another 20 people who made me smile, but that wouldn’t be nearly as funny.
